Developing safety indicators for preventing offshore oil and gas deepwater drilling blowouts

An important question with respect to the Macondo blowout is whether the accident is a symptom of systemic safety problems in the deepwater drilling industry. An answer to such a question is hard to obtain unless the risk level of the oil and gas (O&G) industry is monitored and evaluated over time. This article presents information and indicators from the Risk Level Project (RNNP) in the Norwegian O&G industry related to safety climate, barriers and undesired incidents, and discusses the relevance for deepwater drilling. The main focus of the major hazard indicators in RNNP is on production installations, whereas only a limited number of incident indicators and barrier indicators are related to mobile drilling units. The number of kicks is an important indicator for the whole drilling industry, because it is an incident with the potential to cause a blowout. Currently, the development and monitoring of safety indicators in the O&G industry seems to be limited to a short list of "accepted" indicators, but there is a need for more extensive monitoring and understanding. This article suggests areas of extensions of the indicators in RNNP for drilling based on experience from the Macondo blowout. The areas are related to schedule and cost, well planning, operational aspects, well incidents, operators' well response, operational aspects and status of safety critical equipment. Indicators are suggested for some of the areas. For other areas, more research is needed to identify the indicators and their relevance and validity.

[1]  Sunniva Anette Steen,et al.  Monitoring of Human and Organizational Factors Influencing the Risk of Major Accidents , 2010 .

[2]  Ulrich Hauptmanns,et al.  Management of health, safety and environment in process industry , 2008 .

[3]  Roger M. Cooke,et al.  Towards a causal model for air transport safety—an ongoing research project , 2006 .

[4]  Jan Erik Vinnem,et al.  Safety, economic incentives and insurance in the Norwegian petroleum industry , 2008, Reliab. Eng. Syst. Saf..

[5]  R. W. Vetter.  Integrated operations , 1988, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun..

[6]  Eric Rambaldi.  Deepwater Development Challenges from an Operator Point of View: The Essential Combination of Existing Field Experience with Innovation and New Technologies , 2010 .

[7]  Snorre Sklet,et al.  Safety barriers: Definition, classification, and performance , 2006 .

[8]  M. Elisabeth Paté-Cornell,et al.  Human and management factors in probabilistic risk analysis: the SAM approach and observations from recent applications , 1996 .

[9]  George Apostolakis,et al.  Incorporating organizational factors into risk assessment through the analysis of work processes , 1994 .

[10]  Andrew Hale,et al.  Why safety performance indicators , 2009 .

[11]  Jan Erik Vinnem,et al.  A Method for Developing and Structuring Risk Activity Indicators for Major Accidents , 2004 .

[12]  Colin Summerhayes,et al.  Deep Water – The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling , 2011 .

[13]  David Woods,et al.  Resilience Engineering: Concepts and Precepts , 2006 .

[14]  Snorre Sklet,et al.  Barrier and operational risk analysis of hydrocarbon releases (BORA-Release). Part I. Method description. , 2006, Journal of hazardous materials.

[15]  Charles D. Whitson,et al.  Lessons Learned in the Planning and Drilling of Deep, Subsalt Wells in the Deepwater Gulf of Mexico , 2001 .

[16]  K. Roberts,et al.  Must accidents happen? Lessons from high-reliability organizations , 2001 .

[17]  Jan Erik Vinnem,et al.  Risk Management: With Applications from the Offshore Petroleum Industry , 2007 .

[18]  Jon Espen Skogdalen,et al.  Analysis of root causes of major hazard precursors (hydrocarbon leaks) in the Norwegian offshore petroleum industry , 2010, Reliab. Eng. Syst. Saf..

[19]  Knut Øien,et al.  A framework for the establishment of organizational risk indicators , 2001, Reliab. Eng. Syst. Saf..

[20]  Emery Roe,et al.  High Reliability Management: Operating on the Edge , 2008 .

[21]  Urban Kjellen,et al.  Prevention of accidents through experience feedback , 2000 .

[22]  Andrew Hale,et al.  I-Risk: development of an integrated technical and management risk methodology for chemical installations , 2003 .

[23]  George Apostolakis,et al.  The work process analysis model (WPAM) , 1994 .

[24]  Vinh N. Dang,et al.  Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management , 2004 .

[25]  Snorre Sklet,et al.  Generalized methodology for operational risk analysis of offshore installations , 2009 .

[26]  J. S. Lane,et al.  Meeting the Challenge of Potential Deepwater Spills: Cooperative Research Effort Between Industry and Government , 2000 .

[27]  Samuel F. Noynaert,et al.  Modeling Ultra-Deepwater Blowouts and Dynamic Kills and the Resulting Blowout Control Best Practices Recommendations , 2005 .

[28]  J. Vinnem.  Offshore Risk Assessment , 1999 .

[29]  Stephen Castle,et al.  Critical Requirements for Successful Fluid Engineering in HPHT Wells: Modeling Tools, Design Procedures & Bottom Hole Pressure Management in the Field , 1998 .

[30]  Mike Payne,et al.  Designer Casing for Deepwater HPHT Wells , 2005 .

[31]  Fikry Botros,et al.  SS: Thunder Horse and Atlantis Deepwater Frontier Developments in the Gulf of Mexico: Future Challenges for Deepwater Developments , 2010 .

[32]  Ben J. M. Ale.  More thinking about process safety indicators , 2009 .

[33]  Brian M. Smith,et al.  Deepwater Gulf of Mexico Development Challenges Overview , 2008 .

[34]  Jan Erik Vinnem.  Risk indicators for major hazards on offshore installations , 2010 .

[35]  Najmus Saqib,et al.  Aggregation of safety performance indicators to higher-level indicators , 2008, Reliab. Eng. Syst. Saf..

[36]  Andrew Hale.  Special Issue on Process Safety Indicators , 2009 .

[37]  Xiaobo Tan,et al.  TECHNICAL RESEARCH REPORT , 2004 .

[38]  P.J.M. Sonnemans,et al.  Accidents in the chemical industry: are they foreseeable? , 2006 .

[39]  Jan Erik Vinnem,et al.  Major hazard risk indicators for monitoring of trends in the Norwegian offshore petroleum sector , 2006, Reliab. Eng. Syst. Saf..

[40]  Ingrid Bouwer Utne,et al.  Building Safety indicators: Part 1 – Theoretical foundation , 2011 .

[41]  Douglas W. Hubbard,et al.  The Failure of Risk Management: Why It's Broken and How to Fix It , 2009 .

[42]  Ingrid Bouwer Utne,et al.  Building Safety indicators: Part 2 - Application, practices and results , 2011 .

[43]  D. E. Embrey,et al.  Incorporating management and organisational factors into probabilistic safety assessment , 1992 .

[44]  Snorre Sklet,et al.  Barrier and operational risk analysis of hydrocarbon releases (BORA-Release). Part II: Results from a case study. , 2006, Journal of hazardous materials.

[45]  Arvin W. Hahn.  REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT , 1964 .

[46]  Jens Rasmussen,et al.  Risk management in a dynamic society: a modelling problem , 1997 .