INA’s missing gas platform found on seabed

Illustration – IVANA A – (Photo credit: INA)

ZAGREB, Dec 10 (Hina) – INA’s “Ivana D” offshore gas platform, which disappeared in the northern Adriatic during a recent violent windy storm, was found on the seabed on Thursday, the Croatian oil and gas company said today.

The unmanned platform stayed 50 kilometres northwest of Pula. Contact with the platform was lost on Saturday afternoon when the northern Adriatic region was hit by strong winds and high tides.

The search for the missing platform was conducted with the help of Junak ship and its underwater robot.

The event with the platform did not damage the environment as the Emergency Shut Down system was activated on it, said INA on Tuesday.

INA confirmed that the joints connecting it to the piles had broken, while the pipes leading from the well to the part of the platform above water did not break but had bent and were on the bottom.

Today’s improved weather conditions made it possible to visit the platform’s location and to engage an autonomous underwater vehicle.

The company said maintenance could be ruled out as the cause of the breaks and that an ongoing investigation would establish the exact causes. After all the relevant data is collected, INA will decide whether to resume production or shut down the well on that location, while at the same time drawing up remediation plan for the Ivana D location.

The last coordinated inspection of the platform was done in October when it was certified as safe, an underwater inspection was done in 2018, and an INA crew inspected it on December 1 this year, the company said.