Lack of Dynamic Leadership Skills and Human Failure Contribution Analysis to Manage Risk in Deep Water Horizon Oil Platform

Abstract This paper analyses the case study of Macondo Well Blowout and the failures of dynamic leadership skills and human contribution to process risk. The Deepwater horizon oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico was owned by Transocean and operated by British Petroleum (BP), this disaster took place on April 20, 2010 in off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico that eventually led to an oil spillage. Millions of barrels of oil flooding into the sea and beaching the shore. The analysis was executed by identifying the human factors, hazardous conditions, developing FTA, and constructing a pairwise matrix. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was performed to evaluate the Consistency Index (CI), Quality Index (QI), and the overall qualification of influencing factors. From the results it was observed that the least QI value was found in the factor failure to gain control of well response and the factor negative pressure test has 36% which recorded as the highest QI. On the whole, the overall qualification of influencing factors is marked as poor. Ultimately, these results demonstrate that this tragedy is due to complete human errors and it is the evidence of both Transocean and BP employee’s poor leadership abilities.

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