OSLO (Reuters) – A worker at Equinor’s
Norway, Western Europe’s top oil and gas producer, has 8,000-10,000 people working at offshore production platforms, drilling rigs and supply vessels at any given time, industry data shows.
Located in the North Sea, 160 km from land, the much-delayed Martin Linge field is under construction and is planned to start production at the end of 2020.
The infected person arrived on March 4 and was isolated five days later. There are currently 776 people offshore, working on the project and spread across three installations, Equinor said in a statement.
The three installations are the Martin Linger platform, the Maersk
Equinor is also awaiting test results for two other people.
“The activity on the field will be reduced today. Personnel remain at the installations they are already located on. Equinor is continuously evaluating further measures,” the company said.
“The person had recently been to Austria. When Austria was listed as a high-risk destination, the person was quarantined on board and a test was conducted,” Equinor added.
Originally scheduled for completion in 2016, Martin Linge has been plagued by cost overruns, and the start-up date has been postponed several times.
The are more than 80 producing fields on the Norwegian continental shelf, although some share platforms or have only remotely run subsea installations.
Equinor is operator for a majority of the fields.
Other operators include Aker BP
(Reporting by Terje Solsvik; Editing by Tom Hogue, Muralikumar Anantharaman and Giles Elgood)
