By Beate Evensen and Stephen Voss
Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) — Statoil ASA and Royal Dutch Shell Plc said they were immediately halting production at two oil and gas platforms off the coast of Norway, following an order from the country’s Petroleum Safety Authority.
The authority told the companies yesterday to close the Snorre A and Draugen platforms because faulty lifeboats reduced their evacuation capacity. They kept pumping oil until again ordered to stop today, when the regulator reiterated it wouldn’t allow them an exemption. The closings affect 280,000 barrels of oil a day, or about a 10th of the country’s oil output, according to Statoil and Norway’s Petroleum Directorate.
“We took direct contact with the companies and made it clear that the consequence of our decision is immediate closure,” the safety regulator said in a statement on its Web site today.
Statoil will starting shutting Snorre A “immediately,” company spokesman Jone Stangeland said today by phone. “It will take around five to six days to shut down the field’s complete production.”
Shell “is in the process of shutting” Draugen, which will be completed later today, Geir Haug, a Shell spokesman in Norway, said by telephone. The company is working on modifying lifeboats, which will take one to two weeks, he said.
Platform Output
Snorre A, in the North Sea, pumps about 110,000 barrels of oil a day and also gets about 90,000 barrels a day from the nearby Vigdis field. The Draugen field in the Norwegian Sea, operated by Shell, produces about 80,000 barrels of oil a day.
The decision yesterday came after a report found a particular type of lifeboat wasn’t strong enough to be dropped from the platforms to the sea.
Eight offshore installations have 39 of the boats, Norway’s oil industry association said two days ago. The other six were allowed to continue operations because they could lower the boats instead of dropping them, according to the safety authority.
Shell owns 26.2 percent of Draugen, which has been in production since 1993. The remainder is owned by Petoro AS, BP Plc and Chevron Corp.
Norway, Europe’s largest oil producer, pumped about 2.75 million barrels of oil a day last month, according to the International Energy Agency.
To contact the reporters on this story: Stephen Voss in London at [email protected] ; Beate Evensen in Oslo at [email protected]
Last Updated: October 13, 2006 07:23 EDT
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Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
