Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE)

I don’t buy the argument that industry and regulators have paid too much attention to personal safety at the expense of process safety. Casualties from falls, falling objects, helicopter crashes, and other workplace activities have been persistent, and safety management programs must emphasize practices and procedures that will reduce occurrence rates.

Also, process safety has hardly been ignored. API RP 14 C has proven to be an effective safety analysis procedure for addressing undesirable events associated with each process component of a production facility.  For more complex facilities, Deepwater Operating Plans and API RP 14J, “Recommended Practice for Design and Hazard Analysis for Offshore Production Facilities, ” are good risk management supplements to RP 14C.

That said, we need better programs for sustaining the focus needed to further reduce the probability of low frequency, high consequence events.  When memories about the most recent disaster start to fade, what do we do to keep workers on edge and prevent complacency? What more can be done to prevent events with enormous consequence potential?  Some thoughts:

1. Establish programs to remind employees about past disasters – how they happened and how they could have been prevented. How many offshore workers know the chain of events that led to the Santa Barbara blowout, Ocean Ranger sinking, Alexander Kielland capsizing, Piper Alpha fire and explosion, Ixtoc blowout, and other historic incidents? When discussing international incidents, we need to explain how our facilities or region might have been vulnerable under similar circumstances.
2. Present information on minor incidents that could have escalated into disasters, emphasizing what could have gone wrong and why.
3. Don’t just focus on the last disaster.  While addressing the operational and organizational issues that surfaced at Montara and Macondo, we also must assess incident data and identify activities and practices that could lead to the next disaster.
4. Operators should not rely on the regulator to manage their operations. Reading about Montara and Macondo, one senses that the regulators were called on to referee internal company disputes and protect the operators and contractors from themselves.
5. Regulators should not be making day-to-day operating decisions. Regulators should make sure that the regulations are clear and that operators have effective management procedures for adjusting programs as new information is obtained. Regimes that provide for regulator approval of each activity or adjustment promote operator complacency and are not in the best interest of safety over the long term.
6. Service companies and contractors must challenge operators and regulators.  Operators should expect contractors to think and question, not to simply execute orders. There are impressive examples of contractors insisting on safety improvements, and being willing to forego business rather than compromise on safety.
7. All sectors of the offshore industry should participate in standards development. Effective standards are dependent on diverse input.
8. Industry and government leaders should promote innovation. Obvious weaknesses should be identified and industry should be challenged to propose solutions. For example, why do concerns about “false alarms” preclude automatic alarm activation (see Transocean’s Macondo report)? Data from redundant sensors can be analyzed by predictive software that is capable of quickly identifying real events. Similarly, why have advances in BOPE, including monitoring systems, been so slow? Why are BOP capabilities still poorly understood? Why are well integrity and casing pressure issues (producing wells) so common?