Shell has been issued with an improvement notice by health and safety chiefs after a gas leak near a vessel in the North Sea.
The leak was detected several hundred metres away from the company's floating production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) Curlew on January 19 this year.
It happened when a ship's towline snagged on a pipeline below the vessel about 130 miles south-east of Aberdeen and then ruptured.
The company initially planned to evacuate the 91 people on board during the incident but later decided it was not necessary.
It has now been told to make improvements by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which reported: "The towline ... snagged the gas export pipeline's subsea isolation valve skid and ... applied increased tension to the towline until the pipeline ruptured and released its inventory of gas to the sea surface, thus exposing employees and others to a risk of fire and/or explosion.
"The management of change process failed to ensure that a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to the safety of their employees and other persons not in their employment was made."
A Shell spokeswoman said: "Shell can confirm it was issued an improvement notice on August 14 by the HSE in relation to our management of change process for marine operations at our Curlew FPSO.
"The improvement notice refers to a gas release incident which occurred from infrastructure in the vicinity of the Curlew FPSO late on Monday, January 19, 2015. Action is being taken to address the issues raised in the notice.
"The relevant authorities were informed of the incident and the matter remains under HSE investigation."
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