NOPSEMA has ordered Jadestone to urgently address corrosion on its aged Montara Venture oil vessel in the Timor Sea, which "may pose significant safety and environmental risks."
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NOPSEMA has ordered Jadestone to urgently address corrosion on its aged Montara Venture oil vessel in the Timor Sea, which "may pose significant safety and environmental risks."
Offshore regulator NOPSEMA has ordered UK-listed Jadestone Energy to urgently fix corrosion on its Montara Venture oil vessel in the Timor Sea that "may pose significant safety and environmental risks."
Jadestone has 90 days to convince NOPSEMA that "the residual risk from operating an aged, single-hulled oil facility is reduced to a level that is as low as reasonably practicable" and that its management of corrosion meets the standard of common industry practice.
More modern floating production, storage and offloading vessels (FPSOs) have double hulls to reduce the risk of oil spilling into the ocean.
The £100 million ($204 million) company must also get the safety of the vessel confirmed by an independent party.
More urgently, Jadestone has 30 days from 8 September to satisfy NOPSEMA that the vessel is safe for its workers until the degraded hull is fixed.
Jadestone has 60 days to produce a plan to fix the problems that include not inspecting for corrosion as often as it promised in the vessel's safety case, leaving a significant number of temporary repairs in place for too long without doing a permanent fix, and "restoring" proper processes to manage corrosion.
The direction published on Monday comes 4½ years after the £100 million ($204 million) company was first ordered to improve its management of corrosion on the 274m-long vessel.
That action was completed, but it appears Jadestone's maintenance has since slipped below acceptable levels.
In July, Jadestone chief executive Mitch Little told investors the company was cutting operating expenses across its assets, which include the Stag oil vessel off WA, an interest in Woodside-operated oil production, and projects in Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam.
Peter Milne
In the first half of 2025, Jadestone's operating expenses were 10 per cent less than the corresponding period in 2024.
The belt tightening was in part driven by a cost blowout on drilling a new well at Montara that was estimated to cost $US70 million but eventually cost about $US100 million.
In 2022 and 2023, Jadestone shut down production from Montara numerous times to fix corrosion issues. In one incident, oil leaked into the ocean through a hole in the bottom of a tank.
The current action from NOPSEMA is its sixth against the Montara since 2021.
In August, NOPSEMSA ordered Jadestone to fix cylinders containing nitrogen at 300 times atmospheric pressure in a high-traffic area that were "in a severely corroded state."
Jadestone has been asked to comment.
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