Looking Back and Forward: Could Safety Indicators Have Given Early Warnings about the Deepwater Horizon Accident?

An important question with respect to the Deepwater Horizon accident 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 related to major accident prevention, preparedness, and responses of the oil and gas industry is measured and evaluated over time. In this paper, we present information and indicators from the Risk Level Project (RNNP) in the Norwegian oil and gas industry related to safety climate, barriers and undesired incidents, and discuss relevance for drilling, in particular 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. Therefore, in this paper we discuss extensions of the indicators in RNNP in light of the Deepwater Horizon accident. Aspects related to well integrity and the two barrier principle, well planning, schedule and cost, undesired incidents, and well monitoring/intervention are discussed, as well as best practices/guidelines, status/failure in safety critical technical equipment, and operational conditions. 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. It is the authors‘ view that there is a need for more extensive investigations of incidents like ―kicks‖ to ensure improved learning. Our opinion is that if indicators from RNNP are supplemented by additional indicators, early warnings about potential failures in several of the barriers related to the Deepwater Horizon accident could have been provided. However, such early warnings demands cooperation across national borders, operators, vendors, specialist environments, as well as between industry and regulatory authorities.