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Posts Tagged ‘accidents’

Risk Management

Posted in accidents, Norway, tagged , , , , , on October 28, 2010| 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.

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Mark Fleming on Safety Culture

Posted in conferences, tagged , , , , on October 27, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Peoples attitudes and opinions have been formed over decades of life and cannot be changed by having a few meetings or giving a few lectures. Mao Tse Tung (from Mark Fleming’s presentation linked below)

Sometimes presentations don’t fulfill the lofty expectations of the audience, particularly when the titles are catchy.  That definitely was not the case with Dr. Mark Fleming’s outstanding presentation at the Vancouver conference.  Mark’s presentation entitled Know where you are going rather than where you have been! A Leaders’ guide to continuous safety performance measurement effectively drove home the safety culture message.  I strongly suggest that you take a close look at the presentation (not yet posted, but I’ll provide a link as soon as it is).

In the meantime, you can look at this excellent paper that Mark prepared for Petroleum Research Atlantic Canada and a presentation he made at the Centre for Occupational Health/Safety. Good, thought provoking stuff for you safety gurus!

 

from Dr. Fleming's presentation linked above

 

You have to love “New ideas present problems” from the Bureaucratic column.  So true.  It’s not that new ideas are not welcome, it’s that bureaucracies (public and private) are incapable of dealing with them and are built with insurmountable barriers that prevent their consideration.

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Bad News from Burma

Posted in accidents, tagged , , on October 25, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Odd Finnestad alerted me to this tragic incident reported in the Bangkok Post:

At least 14 people have been killed and 58 more injured in a fire at an oil well in central Burma, an official in the military-ruled country said Monday.

Will we ever learn the details?

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Posted in accidents, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 14, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Now that Chile, with the help of the international community (including two companies from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania where the drilling industry began), has rescued the 33 miners, can we drill into the Australian government and rescue the Montara and Varanus Island reports?

While we are at it, can we learn more about these accidents?

Let’s learn from past accidents, so we don’t need dramatic rescues in the future.

The offshore safety record will be suspect until industry and governments have credible, internationally accepted programs and policies for ensuring that accidents are independently investigated and that investigation updates and reports are released in a timely manner.

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Drilling Ban to End This Week

Posted in accidents, drilling, Offshore Energy - General, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 12, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The White House said Tuesday the government will lift a moratorium on deep water oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico “very soon” – likely this week. Washington Post

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Too many distractions before Macondo blew?

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on October 9, 2010| Leave a Comment »

There were so many simultaneous activities — starting with the displacing of mud to the pumping of fluids overboard — it was difficult to see what was going on. John Gisclair, Sperry Sun (see Times Picayune summary of yesterday’s BOEM-Coast Guard hearing)

 

John Gisclair

 

Too much at once? Hurrying to finish the job? Cost concerns?  No one in charge? Distracted by managers visiting the rig? One or more of these human and organizational factors appears to have contributed to the blowout.

Similarly, the rigid commitment to “batching” the development wells (for efficiency reasons) seems to have been a factor contributing to the Montara blowout in the Timor Sea.  If after removing the corrosion cap on the production casing, the work on the H1 well had continued in series (i.e. casing tied-back, BOP installed, and well secured) before moving on to another well, this blowout may have been prevented.

At both Macondo and Montara, time pressures (perceived or real) may also have affected the way negative-pressure tests were conducted or assessed.  These tests should have detected the influx of hydrocarbons via the shoe track.

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Views on Vancouver

Posted in conferences, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 8, 2010| Leave a Comment »

In less than 10 days, we kick off the International Regulators’ Offshore Safety Conference in Vancouver.  The venue is top-notch, the list of delegates is long and impressive, and the speakers are world leaders in offshore operations, safety, and regulatory practices.  Everything is in place for a productive conference; now it is up to us.  We must challenge the speakers, each other, and conventional wisdom if we want to make a difference.  We need to understand where we have been, and then focus on where we are going.  In that regard, the “Roundtable Discussions” will be an important part of the conference.  If you plan to attend the conference and would like to assist with the Roundtable Sessions, send a note to edanenberger@gmail.com.

Here are ten issues that I look forward to discussing with other delegates:

  1. How do we develop a comprehensive and verified international incident data base?   The IRF data and some of the industry efforts are good starts, but where do we go from there?
  2. What other performance data should be routinely collected?
  3. How do we assess emerging and hidden risks?  In that regard, I am looking forward to Torleif Husebø’s presentation: PSA’s Risk Level Measuring Scheme and how available data are collected and used.
  4. Looking beyond centralizers, long-strings, and corrosion caps, what are the management lessons from Macondo and Montara?
  5. Is there such a thing as a hybrid regulatory regime?  While a certain amount of prescription is necessary in any regulatory system, how can a regime have both  “command and control” and “safety case” elements?  Aren’t they contradictory?
  6. How do we develop and encourage safety leaders?  How do we measure their progress.  In that regard, I am really looking forward to Mark Fleming’s presentation: Know where you are going rather than where you have been! A Leaders’ guide to continuous safety performance measurement
  7. Can regulators inhibit industry safety achievement?  How do we encourage innovation and leadership?  How do we deal with those who have no interest in either?
  8. Should standards participation and safety research be a part of every operator’s safety management programs?
  9. Can the international community help provide stability and perspective during crises like Macondo?
  10. What are the next steps in international cooperation on offshore safety?

 

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And here is the final SEMS rule

Posted in accidents, Regulation, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 7, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Safety and Environmental Management Systems

This rulemaking will incorporate in its entirety and make mandatory the AmericanPetroleum Institute’s Recommended Practice 75, Development of a Safety andEnvironmental Management Program for Offshore Operations and Facilities, with respectto operations and activities under the jurisdiction of BOEMRE. This final rule will applyto all OCS oil and gas and sulphur operations and the facilities under BOEMREjurisdiction including drilling, production, construction, well workover, well completion,well servicing, and DOI pipeline activities.

The rule will become effective on November 15, 2010.

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National Commission Releases 4 Draft Staff Papers

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Decision Making Within the Unified Command

The Use of Surface and Subsea Dispersants During the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

The Challenges of Oil Spill Response in the Arctic

The Amount and Fate of the Oil

 

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Two Items From Yesterday’s CG-BOEM Macondo Hearings

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Absent live streaming or television, the Times Picayune seems to be providing the best coverage of the Coast Guard – BOEM Macondo hearings in New Orleans.  While the legal sparring has attracted the most press interest, two other items in this Times Picayune article caught my attention.

Part of Keplinger and Fleytas’ duties was to monitor indicators of gas detectors and alarms from the bridge. Keplinger was busy showing visiting BP and Transocean officials a video-game-style simulator for 45 minutes to an hour before the explosions, he said, but he insisted that Fleytas was keeping him abreast of readouts of the rig’s systems.

Comment: Just as school teachers shouldn’t have been flying in the space shuttle, “tourists” shouldn’t have been visiting a complex drilling operation when the crew was in the process of setting production casing and suspending a potentially dangerous well. While the visit was well-intended, the last thing the crew needed on that night was to be distracted by a group of corporate executives.  The distraction they caused was comparable to driving on a dangerous highway while getting text messages from your boss. Visiting windows should be limited to relatively low-risk operations (e.g. when drilling ahead prior to reaching target intervals), and these windows should immediately close if complications develop.

Keplinger flashed some anger at Capt. Curt Kuchta, captain of the Deepwater Horizon rig, during his testimony. He noted that a fellow rig worker, Chris Pleasant, had to ask Kuchta three times whether to disconnect the rig from the wellhead before he got the go-ahead.

Comment: One of the benefits of drilling from a floating and dynamically positioned rig is the ability to move off location if trouble arises.  The failure to disconnect the riser and move away from the well at the first indication of flow contributed significantly to the tragic consequences.  The technical and human factors that prevented such a disconnect must be thoroughly examined.

Further comment: The absence of live streaming of these important safety hearings is inexcusable.  If a senator or governor were testifying, I expect that the cameras would be there.

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