Hot work permit
“This was a system we got from the USA. My first encounter with it was in 1971 when we were due to carry out a welding job on Gulftide.
“A Norwegian called Erik Eriksen, who later worked for ConocoPhillips, arrived from Randaberg Sveis and asked whether we shouldn’t have a hot work permit.
“’What’s that?’ I asked, and he explained that this system prevailed at the Shell refinery in Risavika outside Stavanger. My response was: ‘We’ll just make one of those’.
“So we produced the first hot work permit on Ekofisk on a sheet of A4 paper. When I mentioned this to the Americans, they said such a system existed in the States. So we had it sent over.
“Up to 500 such permits were in force every day when we built the Ekofisk tank. Work went on around the clock there. Each permit was only valid for the 12 hours a shift lasted.
“They then had to be reissued for the next shift. It was pretty early to rise and late to bed for the supervisors who handed out these documents.”
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