Events Deepwater Horizon

He is equally scathing about estimates of consequence. He believes that the consequences of events such as Deepwater Horizon or Fukushima—Daiichi will always be much more serious that estimated in the risk management models. 

If the worst happens, and there is a big release of oil or gas to the ocean, industry needs to be able to respond quickly and effectively. The Deepwater Horizon incident demonstrated that such a response capability was not in place—it took industry 3 months to cap the leak from the damaged well head and to direct the flow of oil to a safe location. The National Commission report to the President (discussed in detail in the next chapter) says the following about that event. 

Just as the events of April 20, 2010, exposed a regulatory regime that had not kept up with the industry it was responsible for overseeing, the events that unfolded in the subsequent weeks and months made it dismayingly clear that neither BP nor the federal government was prepared to deal with a spill of the magnitude and complexity of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. 

The Report to the President concerning the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe discussed the creation of an industry-sponsored agency analogous to the nuclear industry s independent Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) that was created in the wake of the Three Mile Island event. The President s Commission to do with that event said the following. 

With occupational safety measurement is fairly simple recordables and other statistics provide a reliable indication of how a company is doing and how it compares to others. The measurement of results with regard to Process Safety is much more tricky. But the measurement problem is even more severe when it comes to the topic of culture. In particular it is very difficult to assess people are people issues. For example, one of the reports that was written following the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe (BOEMRE, 2011) records in some detail the tension that existed between two of the managers and publishes some of the emails that were sent prior to the event. These clashes illustrate the difficulties of implementing a positive culture, particularly when personalities clash or department managers are squabbling with one another. 

Senior managers are concerned primarily with long-term issues. With respect to risk, they are particularly sensitive to the potential for major environmental and safety events such as the Exxon Valdez spill, the refinery explosion at Texas City, or the Deepwater Horizon/Macondo catastrophe. 

It is unusual for a process safety event to involve conflict between people (although it was a factor in the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe). However, conflicting departmental goals are often a factor— particularly the perceived clash between safety and getting the job done. We may instill the mantra There s always time to do a job safely into people. But they do not always behave that way. 

The stories we tell should have a resolution. In the case of major events such as Piper Alpha or Deepwater Horizon, the resolution could be new ways of managing safety (Safety Cases) or the introduction of new regulations (SEMS). Even less dramatic stories should always provide guidance to better behaviors or improved management systems. 

The oil industry has said the Deepwater Horizon rig catastrophe was a unique event, the result of an unprecedented series of missteps that are unlikely to be repeated. The recent history of offshore drilling suggests otherwise. 

Deepwater Horizon. Immediately prior to the blowout there had been an onboard ceremony to recognize the facility s outstanding (occupational) safety record. It is possible that the schedule for this event had added pressure to the drilling team to get their work finished. 

At tunes it seemed as if industry had a response to the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe on same lines as that of Captain Smith, quoted above. Many people were stunned that the event could have occurred and managers from other companies were quick to point out that it could not have happened in their organization. Yet it did happen, and it became an industry-wide issue. 

The third lesson from the Santa Barbara spill is that events such as this can have enormous financial consequences (another lesson being relearned following Deepwater Horizon). Since the time of this event, drilling off the coast of California has been severely restricted in spite of the fact that the additional revenues generated would provide welcome relief to that state s stretched finances. 

The Deepwater Horizon event occurred in April 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. At the time of this writing, some of the investigation reports (such as that from the... 

Of the many reports written having to do with the Deepwater Horizon/ Macondo (DWH) event of April 2010, four are reviewed here. In chronological order they are ... 

The third and fourth reports did not address the Deepwater Horizon event in detail. However, both of them were profoundly influenced by the need to respond to this catastrophic event and provide guidance as to actions that can be taken to improve the culture of the offshore oil and gas industry. 

Naturally, the scope of the four documents is very broad and they cover a very wide range of topics including details of the Deepwater Horizon event, the subsequent environmental impact, the regulatory background, and emergency response. But one topic threads through these reports safety culture in the offshore oil and gas industries and how culture can be developed, implemented, and measured. 

Soon after the occurrence of the Deepwater Horizon tragedy. President Obama set up a commission to look into its causes and to make recommendations as to how such events could be avoided in the future. The committee issued its report in January 2011 (National Commission 2011), although critical information—particularly the conditions of the Blowout Preventer—was not known at the time of publication. 

The report of the President s Commission having to do with the Deepwater Horizon event contains a total of 29 recommendations. They are divided into the following seven categories ... 

The committee started work before the Deepwater Horizon event. It was then decided that,... 

The Summit did not consider the details of the Deepwater Horizon event. However, the justification for the meeting was based on it. Indeed, the first sentence of the Summit report reads,... 

The conclusion that can be drawn from Table 2.15 is that failure to follow rules and regulations was a major factor in four of the listed events (with the obvious exception of Blackboard). As the President s Commission report that had to do with Deepwater Horizon pointed out, it is imperative that the rules are modified and upgraded to meet the challenges posed by new technology. However, the reality is that many events could have been avoided had the facilities involved simply followed the old, established regulations. 

As the recent Deepwater Horizon and Montara events have demonstrated so dramatically, blowouts can be both dangerous and environmentally destructive. They are also very expensive, both in terms of destroyed equipment and wasted production. Therefore, any Safety Management System (SMS) for a drilling rig must pay particular attention to the avoidance of blowouts. 

Prior to the Deepwater Horizon/Macondo disaster, the safety of oil and gas facilities on the United States Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) was regulated by the Minerals Management Service (MMS). Following that event, the agency was reorganized and renamed as BOEMRE. This new agency was then quickly divided into two new stand-alone agencies BOEM and BSEE. 

The Jones Act (46 U.S.C. 688(a)) allows injured sailors to receive proper damages from their employers for negligence by the shipowner, the captain, or fellow members of the crew. The Act, which is part of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (updated in 2006), is also used to control the use of foreign vessels in U.S. waters. For this reason, in the immediate aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon event, there were problems bringing in non-American vessels to help with the clean-up work. 

The standard is somewhat confusing as to whether the hazards to be identified have to do with technical, process or occupational safety. The topic of Job Safety Analysis (JSA), which has mostly to do with occupational safety, is an integral part of the standard. Yet, RP 75 is fundamentally a management standard, so the focus of a hazards analysis should be on process safety issues and the avoidance of catastrophic events such as Deepwater Horizon. 

The Stop Work provision of the SEMS rule is not part of RP 75. It was introduced with SEMS II. The topic has received close attention from BSEE, presumably because there were so many occasions during the Deepwater Horizon/Macondo incident when someone had an opportunity to stop the event from progressing. 

The Deepwater Horizon/Macondo tragedy (April 2010) changed everything. Before that event, in which 11 men died, record quantities of oil flowed into the ocean, and nearly 1 billion dollars worth of equipment plunged to the seabed, the safety record of the offshore oil and gas industry was good, and had been steadily improving. Which was why the tragedy was such a shock—it was so unexpected. 

But the impact of Deepwater Horizon/Macondo went beyond the United States the accident caused oil companies all over the world to think through the effectiveness of their safety management programs. Moreover, events such as the Montara blowout in Australian waters in the year 2009 showed that these events are not confined to one place. The contents of this book therefore go beyond the United States regulatory environment. The book describes some of the major offshore incidents that have occurred over the last 40 years or so, some of which occurred onshore, that led to the development of modem safety management systems and regulations. So, for example, it contains a thorough discussion of the Safety Case approach—a system that was first used in the North Sea but that has now spread to many international locations. 

Note that barrier analysis is a key step, because it fundamentally includes DiD, such as the those invoked against radioactivity release (fuel/primary system/contain-ment), and is an adaptation of the bow-tie methodology that was commonly utilized in and by the oil and gas industry. However, it is now known that such physical, procedural, administrative, and managerial layers may be breached, bypassed, or made ineffective or aggravated by human actions and subsequent loss of control, as exemplified by multiple SAs, such as the Three Mile Island loss of coolant, Davis-Besse head corrosion, Piikushima core melts and explosions, the Concorde and Air France AF447 aircraft crash, and the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil-spill events (Duffey, 2015). 

The above quotation from the Wall Street foumal cites a munber of events and near-misses that occurred worldwide in a 12-month period prior to the Deepwater Horizon blowout. The frequency of such events suggests that the move to evermore-technically-challenging conditions (particularly drilling in deep water) have created problems that have not been fully overcome. Incidents that the article described included the following ... 

Figure 1.1 at the beginning of this chapter showed that the number of offshore safety incidents in the USA has declined dramatically over the last 15 years. Although such a record is very creditable, it does beg the question as to how major events such as the Montara and Deepwater Horizon can happen. One answer to this question is to draw distinctions between Occupational Safety, Process Safety, and Technical Safety, and then to recognize that improvements in one area do not necessarily translate into improvements in the other areas. 

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