Norwegian Petroleum Safety Authority wants Statoil ASA (STL.OS) to take a hard look at the safety work of its entire organization, after another gas leak at an energy platform in the North Sea.

The authority Monday sent an investigation team to the Gullfaks B platform, after Statoil was forced to evacuate the platform Saturday.

An earlier incident at the nearby Gullfaks C platform prompted Statoil to halt drilling and well operations after the oil safety watchdog concluded that "only luck averted a sub-surface blowout and/or explosion."

The incident occurred just one month after the blowout at a BP PLC (BP.LN) well which led to a disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico .

Ole-Johan Faret, press officer at Norwegian Petroleum Safety Authority, said Saturday's incident was of a different kind, but that it is natural for the authority to look into possible parallels.

"These are two serious incidents, and Statoil needs to dig deep into this and find the answers. We want them to look at the whole Gullfaks field and their entire organization," Faret told Dow Jones Newswires in a phone interview.

Statoil spokesman Jannik Lindbaek Jr. told Dow Jones Newswires the company has initiated an internal investigation into the latest incident. He said there is no obvious connection to the earlier incident at Gullfaks C.

"This happened during a planned maintenance operation and was not related to drilling, but beyond that I don't want to go into detail until our investigation is finished," said Lindbaek.
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