Deepwater Horizon uncovered

Last quarter, Next Generation Oil & Gas published a special report in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon spill examining the wider implications the disaster would have on the industry. Here Ian Waldram, board member of the ISOH with longstanding experience of offshore, take a look at the investigations into the explosion to find out what can be done to protect rigs – and their staff – in the future.

“None of the major aspects of offshore drilling safety - not the regulatory oversight, not the industry safety standards, not the spill response practices - kept pace with the push into deepwater.”

Recent news of BP's plans to create an entirely new safety division following the Deepwater Horizon disaster show an admission of the need for industry-wide change in drilling culture.

The department is part of a radical restructure, aimed at re-establishing trust in BP following the events earlier this year, and is designed to strengthen safety and risk management across the company, while restoring reputation amongst all of its stakeholders.

Released on 8 September 2010, the oil giant's initial investigation report catalogues a trail of failures that led to the leak and explosion and breaks from the norm, as offshore incidents are not traditionally explored before court.

Work on oil and gas rigs is a hugely complex activity with many interfaces between oil companies, contractors and their various operating and engineering processes. The report reflects this complexity, and the 'difficult' nature of the Macondo well that BP were drilling clearly contributed to the causes of the initial explosion and the uncontrolled leak that followed.

If these failings are common across the oil industry - and opinions on this currently differ - these are the root causes that need to be better managed and interlinked. This would introduce, or make more robust, key processes and technical standards to improve safety and prevent the pollution that inevitably occurs when deepwater drilling operations go seriously wrong.

The BP investigation team did identify deviations from expected technical and operating standards, both in onshore teams and on Deepwater Horizon, but they leave it to others to apportion blame. Their investigation was limited to 'well-related' issues, leaving emergency response, escape and evacuation, regulatory regimes, oil spill response and underlying cultural causes for others to investigate over the coming months. Hopefully, they will publish reports of similar quality to BP's - you don't have to agree with all their findings in order to acknowledge the clarity of the investigation they have documented. However, failings in these other areas may well have impacted the number of lives lost in April, as well-structured and widely-practiced responses to a major emergency such as a blowout are essential on any offshore rig. And of course, the safety culture can effect whether preventative measures actually work.

It is clear that these wider issues will need to be considered in due course, and also at this stage BP have chosen not to probe deeply into organisational safety culture - though it is known from other sources that prior to the incident, both BP and Transocean were seen to be quite advanced. Deepwater Horizon itself was more than once cited as an exemplar rig, but in hindsight, this could be questioned.

What we can already tell though is that the 'actual culture' was highly results-oriented at this final stage of drilling what was a 'difficult' well. When the technical challenges associated with such drilling coincide with the highest-risk stages of a well, maintaining the right balance between finishing the job and careful assessment of risks is challenging. This ultimately seems to have been the case for the Macondo well, and it appears that some less-than-perfect solutions were accepted in the belief that other systems would 'take the strain'.  Ultimately, no single system was robust enough to prevent disaster.

The report has identified a raft of safety barriers which failed on Deepwater Horizon - wellbore cement, mechanical barriers, pressure integrity testing, well monitoring, well control response, fire and gas system and blowout preventer (BOP) emergency operation. These successive failures allowed reservoir fluids to enter the well, escape, ignite and go on to leak for many days.

BP makes 26 recommendations to prevent such barrier failures in future, covering BP itself, key contractors and the industry as a whole. Most of them seem a fair assessment of how things could begin to change in future, but most will be difficult to manage until there is more open communication between the parties (BP were unable to access some key contractor documents) and blame labelling is reduced. Sadly, this may not change until other 'independent' investigation reports are issued and the main legal issues are ironed out. One helpful feature of the BP report is the clear identification of evidence they were unable to obtain - some apparently due to lack of co-operation but some because the BOP had not been recovered when the report was issued. For that reason, some of the conclusions may now change. 

Its internal recommendations suggest that standards for cement design and testing must be improved, and the process for negative pressure tests more clearly defined. Headlines have concentrated on the subsea BOP, which, if effective, would prevent a continuing leak. The company has said they need clarity on the capability and performance assurance of BOPs and has also suggested standardisation of some details of their deepwater well design. It also emphasises the need for agreement on the required competencies and technical skill levels required for various roles in deepwater drilling. Finally, they identified that well-related performance indicators are required to help expose areas of weakness across the organisation and its drilling contractors.

Regarding contractors, the investigation calls for an internal review of cementing services and well control practices, which failed on Deepwater Horizon. It also calls for stronger assurance processes for BOP design, maintenance and testing.

And finally, for the wider industry, BP suggests certification of subsea engineers who are responsible for BOPs and standardised testing of foam cement slurries for use in high-temperature and high-pressure wells. The investigation also calls for a wider industry review of the areas that BP has identified for its own internal improvement.

Some other important evidence has already come to light from the ongoing Marine Board of Investigation. Instead of the rig general alarm being set to automatic, where it can be activated automatically by flammable gas detectors, it was on manual so that off-shift personnel were not disturbed. The senior Transocean toolpusher (OIM) was having a shower when the first explosion occurred, which seems to confirm that on-duty drilling personnel were insufficiently aware of fluids beginning to enter the well to begin emergency response procedures. No doubt there will be much more to learn about rig design philosophy, emergency response plans and flag state, owner and regulator third party audits - the next stage in this Inquiry is scheduled for October.

It is helpful to compare current opinions about the causes of Deepwater Horizon with what happened immediately after Piper Alpha. Back then, key stakeholders' knee jerk reactions were to suggest that Occidental's UK operations were somehow unique, though in fact many other operators privately knew they had some similar issues on their own platforms. It took Lord Cullen's penetrating Inquiry to make UK plc accept that there were fundamental failings across the industry - as well as some that were specific to Occidental. Current media and some partisan opinion about Deepwater Horizon, in both US and UK, seems to be that BP was largely at fault, but the reality is likely to be similar to the Piper Alpha situation in 1988. 

It is our hope that all stakeholder groups in USA, including politicians, are willing to consider that their current approach to regulating major hazards is perhaps less effective than others, which have achieved positive improvements. That said, major hazard risks can never be reduced to zero, and for those families or individuals who suffer in a disaster, it is of no comfort to them to suggest that the overall chances of anything happening were tiny. For them, the consequences are real, tragic, and cannot be eliminated.

And then there are the attitudes to tackle. Media have reported that Transocean staff working on the rig felt they could not voice any of their worries over health and safety, though in theory the culture was 'anyone can stop the job'. If people feel they cannot point out where there are issues, there is a problem to be addressed, and change is needed from the top down.

When the Deepwater Horizon explosion occurred, senior onshore managers from both Transocean and BP were present, having flown out that day to congratulate the team on seven years without a lost-time injury. This is a stark reminder that good performance in occupational safety and health may not align with good safety in drilling processes, as the controls and competences required to ensure that both areas of risk are low are not all the same.  To account for this, many countries have adopted a 'Safety Case' approach to standardise major hazards, but this gives new challenges to rule-bound regulators, as well as those with legal responsibility for compliance.

It is worth noting that, with drilling projects, the licence holder or operator (BP for the Macondo well) is normally 100 per cent responsible for oil-spill contingency planning and response. To that effect, whatever finally emerges about 'blame' for the blowout, it is likely that BP will have to bear the full costs of pollution. This is a key point to remember when deciding whether its internal investigation report comes to reasonable conclusions about the blowout causes.