FOLLOWING THROUGH: How Industry is Continually Improving the Safety of Offshore Development Post-Horizon

Abstract

The oil and natural gas industry has worked collaboratively in many areas to make great strides to improve the safety of offshore drilling and producing operations since the Horizon incident in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. The paper will discuss these activities. Immediately following the incident, the U.S. oil and natural gas industry launched a comprehensive review of offshore safety and operations to identify potential improvements in spill prevention, intervention, and response capabilities. Four joint industry task forces were assembled to focus on the critical areas of equipment, operating procedures, subsea well control and oil spill response. In addition to their own work, the task forces fully considered the recommendations of the Presidential Oil Spill Commission in forming their recommendations to improve offshore safety and response in the respective four areas. One of the major recommendations and actions directly linked to the Presidential Commission recommendations was the formation of an industry organization fully focused on Safety and Environmental Management Systems (SEMS) and managing risk. The industry organization formed is the Center for Offshore Safety (COS). The COS is fully focused on SEMS and its continual improvement through SEMS Auditing, safety data collection and analysis, good practice development, and sharing industry information. Additionally, there has been a continuing special focus on new and enhanced Industry standards. The task force on equipment and other post-Horizon reports contained strong recommendations on the need to develop new and revised standards to enhance safety in the offshore. This work was done through the standards development process and organizations including collaboration with national and international Standards Development Organizations, the offshore oil and gas community, and the Federal government. The presentation will give an overview of the new and revised standards work to date including API Standard 53 Blowout Prevention Equipment Systems for Drilling Operations; API Standard 65-2 Isolating Potential Flow Zones During Well Construction; and API RP 96 Deepwater Well Design and Construction.