Singapore-headquartered independent Jadestone Energy has discovered more issues with the still offline floating production, storage and offloading vessel on its Montara oilfield offshore Australia.

It seems to be a case of two steps forwards, one step backwards for Jadestone as it battles to restart production from the Montara Venture FPSO that has been shut in since August following a small leak two months prior.

After repairs to the floater’s tanks and the related inspections were completed, the operator turned its focus to the planned four-yearly topsides maintenance programme, which was performed without any apparent technical hitch.

However, while Jadestone was subsequently performing necessary testing on process equipment during production restart activity, a “small number of inconsistencies in standard fittings were identified”. These inconsistencies are being rectified to ensure safe operation and are expected to be completed in about a week, the company said on Thursday.

The operator’s earlier plan to have oil flowing again at Montara in late February was scuppered by severe weather that slowed the topsides maintenance work. Jadestone did not suggest a new timeline for the resumption of production although it said it would make a further announcement when output resumes.