Posts Tagged ‘safety’
International Regulators’ Offshore Safety Conference
Posted in conferences, tagged IRF, offshore oil, safety, vancouver on November 3, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Vancouver Findings and Recommendations
Posted in conferences, tagged IRF, offshore oil, safety, vancouver on November 3, 2010| Leave a Comment »
The following are the consensus findings and recommendations of the 200 operations, safety, and regulatory specialists who participated in the International Regulators’ Offshore Safety Conference (18-20 October, Vancouver):
- Regulatory regimes function most effectively when a single entity has broad safety and pollution prevention responsibility. Gaps, overlap, and confusion are not in the interest of safety or regulatory efficiency.
- The regulator’s core responsibilities and objectives must be clearly identified. Managers must minimize distractions so that regulatory personnel can focus on these objectives.
- Safety management and regulatory priorities should be identified through a comprehensive risk assessment program. Training and competency development programs should be updated to reflect the new risk information. Contracting strategies should be reviewed to assess their safety and risk implications.
- Government and industry should promote an improvement mentality, not a compliance mentality. Continuous communication among regulators, operators, contractors, workers, industry associations and public interest groups is essential for continuous improvement.
- Operators and contractors must manage their companies to achieve safety objectives and must continually assess the effectiveness of their management programs. Regulators should challenge industry to resolve potential safety problems rather than seek to resolve the problems for them.
- Regulators should serve as catalysts for learning by distributing information, hosting workshops, participating in research, and identifying gaps in standards and best practices. Wherever possible, the best standards should be identified and applied internationally.
- Accident investigations should be conducted independently and findings should be promptly and broadly distributed. Industry or government should maintain comprehensive and verified incident data bases. Offshore companies should regularly discuss the causes and implications of past accidents with their employees.
- Industry and government cannot rely solely on incident data to identify risks. New indicators must be explored and assessed, particularly for major hazards and safety culture. Worker input is also essential.
- Peer-based audit programs should be considered for both regulators and operators.
- Industry and regulators should make better use of technology for real time monitoring of safety parameters.
- Sustaining outstanding safety performance is critical to the reputation of industry and government. All personnel should be trained to be safety leaders and should be empowered to stop work without blame.
- Industry and government should Investigate other actions and programs that might help promote, sustain, and monitor a culture of safety achievement.
This is very good, fundamental guidance for all governments and companies.
Macondo spill cost estimate is now $40 billion
Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged accidents, blowouts, bp, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, Gulf of Mexico, macondo, offshore oil, oil spill, safety, well control on November 2, 2010| Leave a Comment »
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.
Back to the Future!
Posted in Regulation, tagged BLM, MMS, offshore oil, Regulation, safety, USGS on November 1, 2010| Leave a 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.
More on Safety Culture
Posted in accidents, conferences, tagged accidents, Deepwater Horizon, Gonzales, Kie, Mark Fleming, offshore oil, Reason, safety, safety culture, Sawicka, unrocked boat, vancouver on October 29, 2010| 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.
Chevron tests point to flawed Macondo cement
Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged accidents, blowouts, cement, Chevron, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, Gulf of Mexico, macondo, National Commission, safety, well control on October 28, 2010| Leave a Comment »
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.
Vancouver Presentations are Posted!
Posted in conferences, tagged IRF, offshore oil, safety, safety culture, vancouver on October 28, 2010| Leave a Comment »
API provides free access to industry standards
Posted in Regulation, tagged API, safety, standards on October 28, 2010| 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.
Risk Management
Posted in accidents, Norway, tagged accidents, Norway, PSA, risk management, safety, Torleif Husebo 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.
Good for Cairn Energy! Good for Greenland!
Posted in conferences, drilling, Norway, tagged Cairn Energy, drilling, Greenland, offshore oil, Phil Tracy, safety on October 27, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Upstream was in attendance at today’s Arctic Oil & Gas Conference in Oslo and posted an interesting report. At the conference, Cairn Energy’s Engineering and Operations Director Phil Tracy wisely avoided the “can’t happen here, can’t happen again, can’t happen to me” traps. Instead, he correctly noted that:
An uninformed public are looking for guarantees we cannot give.
Kudos to Mr. Tracy. We are not politicians, and must be open and honest with the public. Yes, a disaster can happen again, but we will do everything possible to prevent it. While the professional opposition and their political leadership will never be satisfied, the public at large appreciates candid and honest responses.
I was personally required to give a point by point by point submission (covering HSE) to the Greenlandic authorities. Phil Tracy
I have to give high marks to Greenland. They resisted the cry to prohibit drilling, but challenged the operator and insisted on a top-notch operation. Well done!
Cairn operation offshore Greenland. Greenpeace provides moral support.
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 