COSL Drilling Europe was served with an Improvement Notice by UK authorities after an incident earlier this year that saw a 25-tonne object fall when a sling snapped on a rig.

The Chinese-owned contractor has already complied with the notice, which was served by the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) following the 25 May incident on the COSL Pioneer off the UK.

A HSE inspector visited the rig three days after the incident and wrote in the inspection report that COSL Drilling Europe “failed to ensure that appropriate arrangements are in place for the effective planning, organisation, control, monitoring and review of the preventive and protective measures needed for the effective continued operation of the Control of Work” on the rig.

“The permit (number 06327) and associated documents did not accurately describe the work being actually being undertaken,” the report form the HSE inspector read.

“Changes to the way that the work was described in the permit resulted in the failure of a flat web lifting sling and the dropping of the 25-tonne load.

“The subsequent recovery of that dropped load was completed under the same permit which did not describe or reference associated documents in relation to that lifting operation.

“I also observed that there is no effective training of personnel in use of Control of Work and lack of an effective monitoring and auditing of Control of Work at COSL Pioneer.”

A spokesman for COSL Drilling Europe told Upstream that nobody was injured in the incident and the company has already done everything required, and more, to comply with the notice.

The HSE had given the contractor a compliance date of 30 September.

The dropped object was a coil tubing lifting frame. A small amount of damage was caused to the frame, the company spokesman said.

COSL Pioneer is working for CNOOC Ltd-owned Nexen Petroleum on a 13-well plug-and-abandonment campaign at the Ettrick and Blackbird fields off the UK.