Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE)

Sometimes I feel a little foolish spending hours each day reading Montara transcripts and commenting to my small blog audience.  Then I get a call or an email message from people who are closely following this investigation and understand its significance – regulatory experts like Odd Finnestad in Norway, experienced engineers like Tom Maunder in Alaska, serious reporters like Anthea Pitt with Upstream and Kevin Spear with the Orlando Sentinel, and representatives from all sectors of the offshore industry.  That’s when I realize the effort is worthwhile.  Even more gratifying was Mr. Berger’s acknowledgment (beginning on page 109 of today’s transcript) of my Day 18 blog entry.  I appreciate the Commission’s outstanding efforts on behalf of offshore safety, and their interest in the opinions expressed on BOE.

Q. Mr. Berger (Commission): So you say it is not your job to read the daily drilling report to determine whether things like barriers have been installed offline in a batch drilling operation?
A. Mr. Marozzi (Northern Territory Department of Resources): I’m not saying that.
Q. That’s someone else’s job, is it?
A. I’m not saying that. It is my job, but I can only do it to a level that our resources allow.
Q. These daily drilling reports are hardly War and Peace, are they? They’re typically two or three pages; that’s right, isn’t it?
A. That’s true, yes.

Comment: I couldn’t resist this entirely fitting “Not My Job” mention.  If an important task is not your job, you need to either make it your job, or see to it that the operations cease until someone has been identified to do the job and do it well.

THE COMMISSIONER: All I’ve heard is that Mr Marozzi and his unit don’t have the resources to respond properly. I doubt very much if the department doesn’t have sufficient resources, should it so choose, to allocate sufficient resources to this task. It’s a matter of choice on their behalf, I would have thought, but that’s something that can be established at some stage over the next day or do.

Comment: The Commissioner has clearly been in the government long enough to know it’s all about priorities, and perhaps senses that the NT DoR’s were a bit misplaced.

Other comments:

1. Mr. Marozzi indicated that he had limited experience with horizontal wells.  One gets a sense that neither the operator nor the regulator dedicated sufficient resources to technical training.
2. It seems that Mr. Marozzi may have been thinking more in terms of a casing shoe that was about to be drilled out than about a shoe in a well that was going to be suspended.  If the well was drilled out, the cement channels would have been less of an issue and the Formation Integrity Test would have evaluated the integrity of the shoe.
3. In reading the NT submission on the Commission’s website, I was surprised that the NT DoR refused to admit that the cementing of the 9 5/8″ casing and the absence of barriers were contributing factors to the blowout.  Thanks to Mr. Berger’s questioning, the NT has finally conceded on these points.
4. The legislative response in Australia will be very interesting.  The Commonwealth-State jurisdictional issues clearly need to be sorted out.  While the Montara review does not reflect well on the NT, the WA and Victoria regulators seem to have acquitted themselves well.
5. Most countries have jurisdictional challenges similar to Australia.  Will they learn the lessons from Montara?  Regulatory mosaics don’t work.  Gaps, overlap, confusion, finger-pointing, and turf battles increase safety and environmental risks and regulatory and operational costs.