The 2024 Gulf of America Safety Compliance Leaders are ranked below according to the number of incidents of non-compliance (INCs) per facility inspection. To be ranked, a company must:
- operate at least 2 production platforms
- have drilled at least 2 wells during the year
- average <1 INC for every 3 facility inspections (0.33 INCs/facility inspection)
- average <1 INC for every 10 inspections (0.1 INCs/inspection). Note that each facility inspection may include multiple types of inspections (e.g. production, pipeline, pollution, Coast Guard, site security, etc). In 2024, there were on average 3.4 inspections for every facility inspection.
This ranking is based solely on BSEE’s published compliance data. The absence of timely public information on safety incidents (e.g. injuries, fires, pollution, gas releases, property damage) precludes inclusion of these data.
District investigation reports are more timely and provide additional insights into safety performance. Impressively, Hess had no incidents warranting a District investigation, and was the only ranked operator with this distinction. I will comment more on the District reports in a future post
Chevron’s 2024 compliance record was among the best in the history of the US OCS oil and gas program. Was it the absolute best? Were it not for the FSI INC at a Unocal (Chevron) facility, one could unequivocally assert that it was. Further evaluation of that INC would be helpful. However, details on specific INCs are not publicly available, so the significance of that violation cannot be evaluated.
| operator | W | CSI | FSI | total INCs | facility insp | INCs/ fac insp | insp | INCs/ insp |
| Chevron | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 117 | 0.02 | 311 | 0.006 |
| BP | 2 | 3 | 0 | 5 | 93 | 0.05 | 251 | 0.02 |
| Anadarko | 8 | 9 | 1 | 18 | 143 | 0.13 | 344 | 0.05 |
| Hess | 2 | 3 | 0 | 5 | 26 | 0.19 | 67 | 0.07 |
| Walter | 6 | 4 | 1 | 11 | 50 | 0.22 | 161 | 0.07 |
| Shell | 23 | 17 | 5 | 45 | 199 | 0.23 | 495 | 0.09 |
| Cantium | 24 | 8 | 0 | 32 | 123 | 0.26 | 537 | 0.06 |
| Murphy | 8 | 9 | 1 | 18 | 70 | 0.26 | 191 | 0.09 |
| Arena | 29 | 28 | 3 | 60 | 189 | 0.32 | 803 | 0.07 |
| Gulf-wide | 957 | 398 | 109 | 1464 | 3133 | 0.47 | 10664 | 0.14 |
Not meeting the production facilities requirement to be ranked among the top performers, but nonetheless noteworthy, was the compliance record of BOE Exploration & Production (no relation to the BOE blog 😀). See their impressive inspection results below:
| W | CSI | FSI | total INCs | facility insp | INCs/ fac insp | insp | INCs/ insp | |
| BOE | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 21 | 0.1 | 48 | 0.04 |
Transparency on inspections and incidents is important for a program that is dependent on public confidence. For independent observers to better evaluate industry-wide and company-specific safety performance, publication of the following information should be considered:
- quarterly updates of the incident tables, as was once common practice
- posting of violation summaries for inspections resulting in the issuance of one or more INCs
- more timely publication of panel reports for more serious incidents
- real time list of ongoing investigations including the reason for each investigation
- status summary for civil penalties that have been proposed, including the violations and responsible parties
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 