BP is now estimating total Macondo response and damage costs at $39.9 billion. I would guess that only 4 or 5 other operating companies could have survived this type of hit.
Hopefully, every offshore operator is keeping this in mind when formulating safety management programs and training, research, and standards budgets. Companies claiming that such disasters couldn’t happen to them are simply demonstrating that they could, because no company with a proper safety culture would make such a statement.
Posted in accidents, well control incidents | Tagged accidents, blowouts, bp, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, Gulf of Mexico, macondo, offshore oil, oil spill, safety, well control | Leave a Comment »
The above slide is excerpted from Torleif Husebo’s presentation at the Vancouver conference. Since Piper Alpha in 1988, offshore safety leaders have been gathering and assessing hydrocarbon release data. Norway, the UK, Australia, the Netherlands and other nations track these data because they are an important indicator of fire and explosion risks. The IRF reports these data as part of their performance measurement project.
Obviously, when hydrocarbons are unintentionally released at an offshore facility you have the potential for a very dangerous situation. However, because of objections voiced when the MMS updated incident reporting requirements 5 years ago, the US government does not collect the detailed information needed to track the size and cause of these releases. The US is thus unable to monitor trends and benchmark against other nations around the world.
Offshore companies have done well in responding to the drilling issues raised following the blowout. However, the post-Macondo offshore industry needs to provide broad safety leadership. A commitment to collecting performance data and assessing risk trends at OCS oil and gas facilities is absolutely essential. A good place to start would be to initiate a cooperative hydrocarbon release data gathering program.
Posted in accidents, conferences, IRF | Tagged Australia, hydrocarbon releases, macondo, Netherlands, Norway, offshore oil, performance measurement, UK | 1 Comment »
Hyannis Halloween - 1981
Note the sign (above) on our office at Barnstable Municipal Airport in Hyannis. Prior to 1982 when the Minerals Management Service was formed, the OCS regulatory program was part of the US Geological Survey (Conservation Division) and the leasing program was in the Bureau of Land Management. After a 28-year marriage, these functions are again being separated.
As one who worked in the OCS program for 10 years prior to the formation of MMS, I think the the pre-1982 framework is conceptually preferable. However, unless the separation is carefully executed, disruptive conflicts between the two organizations are guaranteed. Such conflicts were common in the pre-MMS days, and the Department of the Interior had to set up a special office to coordinate activities and manage disputes.
In addition to being independent, the new regulatory authority must be fully responsible (without interference) for all regulatory actions from plan approval through abandonment. Without such independence and authority, the separation will only add to the regulatory confusion that has handicapped the OCS program throughout its history.
Technical and scientific personnel in the OCS regulatory program must be freed from non-productive and time-consuming internal disputes and coordination responsibilities so they can concentrate on performance measurement, risk assessment, safety leadership, standards, and technical studies.
Posted in Regulation | Tagged BLM, MMS, offshore oil, Regulation, safety, USGS | Leave a Comment »
I’ll be dressing up in my “command and control” regulator costume 🙂
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
This slide presented by Dr. Mark Fleming during his excellent presentation in Vancouver piqued my interest, so I looked for a bit more information. I found this interesting observation in a paper by Gonzales and Sawicka:
The role of risk perception is particularly interesting. First, performance in both safety and security settings is well characterized by the “unrocked boat” metaphor: Organizations become accustomed to their apparently safe state, thus misperceiving risk and allowing themselves to drift into regions of greater vulnerability, until (near) accidents temporarily induce greater risk awareness. The resulting pattern is oscillatory, with varying amplitude and typically leading to disaster.
The above quote seems to describe the situation on the Deepwater Horizon. Perhaps there was a sense of invulnerability among some employees (including managers) and finishing the job took precedence over safety. As Mark Fleming remarked in his presentation, offshore workers know their employer is in business to produce barrels of oil, not barrels of safety. Concerns about production (or in this case timely suspension of the well) can easily supersede concerns about safety.
The same cultural drivers-time pressure, cost-cutting, indifference to hazards and the blinkered pursuit of commercial advantage-act to propel different people down the same error-provoking pathways to suffer the same kinds of accidents. Each organization gets the repeated accidents it deserves. Unless these drivers are changed and the local traps removed, the same accidents will continue to happen.
Reason goes on to recommend a data collection program that is currently absent, at least on an industry-wide basis:
In the absence of sufficient accidents to steer by, the only way to sustain a level of intelligent and respectful wariness is by creating a safety information system that collects, analyzes, and disseminates the knowledge gained from accidents, near misses, and other sources of ‘free lessons.’
I would suggest that another way to sustain wariness is to present information on past accidents and why they can happen again. How many industry employees know what happened at Santa Barbara, Bay Marchand, Main Pass 41, Ixtoc, the Alexander Kielland, Ocean Ranger, Brent B, South Pass 60 B, and even Piper Alpha?
Finally, Reason reaches this critically important and completely relevant conclusion (keep in mind that this paper is 12-years old):
It need not be necessary to suffer a corporate near-death experience before acknowledging the threat of operational dangers-though that does appear to have been the norm in the past. If we understand what comprises an informed culture, we can socially engineer its development. Achieving a safe culture does not have to be akin to a religious conversion-as it is sometimes represented. There is nothing mystical about it. It can be acquired through the day-to-day application of practical down-to-earth measures. Nor is safety culture a single entity. It is made up of a number of interacting elements, or ways of doing, thinking and managing, that have enhanced resistance to operational dangers as their natural by-product.
Posted in accidents, conferences | Tagged accidents, Deepwater Horizon, Gonzales, Kie, Mark Fleming, offshore oil, Reason, safety, safety culture, Sawicka, unrocked boat, vancouver | 2 Comments »
Chevron’s report states, among other things, that its lab personnel were unable to generate stable foam cement in the laboratory using the materials provided by Halliburton and available design information regarding the slurry used at the Macondo well. Although laboratory foam stability tests cannot replicate field conditions perfectly, these data strongly suggest that the foam cement used at Macondo was unstable. This may have contributed to the blowout.
Further:
The documents provided to us by Halliburton show, among other things, that its personnel conducted at least four foam stability tests relevant to the Macondo cement slurry. The first two tests were conducted in February 2010 using different well design parameters and a slightly different slurry recipe than was finally used. Both tests indicated that this foam slurry design was unstable.
Posted in accidents, well control incidents | Tagged accidents, blowouts, cement, Chevron, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, Gulf of Mexico, macondo, National Commission, safety, well control | Leave a Comment »
Posted in conferences | Tagged IRF, offshore oil, safety, safety culture, vancouver | Leave a Comment »
As promised, API is now providing free access to referenced safety standards. Ironically, the system was initiated while I was looking for online access to RP 53. I tried the new system and it seems to work fine. Registration is required, but the process is quite easy.
Kudos to API for taking this important step.
Posted in Regulation | Tagged API, safety, standards | Leave a Comment »
With all the discussion about risk management, what should government and industry be doing to identify and address potential weaknesses in drilling and production systems? A good place to start would be to review the reports that have been prepared by the Petroleum Safety Authority – Norway (PSA) for the past ten years. These reports use a variety of indicators to assess safety risks on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. Torleif Husebo presented a summary of PSA’s risk program at the Vancouver conference. The full text of their latest report can be viewed here.
As was noted in Vancouver, we need to continue to develop and assess new indicators for possible use in risk management programs.
According to PSA:
No single indicator can pick up all relevant aspects of risk. Developments are accordingly measured by utilising a number of relevant indicators and methods, such as the collection and analysis of incident indicators and barrier data, interviews with key informants and a major questionnaire survey every other year.
Risk management is complex and there is no cookbook. Technological, human, organizational, and procedural factors must all be considered, and everyone needs to be engaged.
Posted in accidents, Norway | Tagged accidents, Norway, PSA, risk management, safety, Torleif Husebo | Leave a Comment »
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 