Experts from the global oil and gas industry have heard that a catastrophic disaster can – and will – happen again if the lessons of Macondo and other similar incidents are not learned and shared routinely.
The stark warning was issued to delegates at SPE Aberdeen’s Another Perspective on Risk conference in Aberdeen, which was organised to address the number of incidents occurring in recent years, despite the wake-up call from the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Incidents at Frade, in Brazil, Eagle Ford in Texas, Gullfaks in Norway, and others in Angola, were highlighted as evidence that valuable lessons had not been taken on board by the industry on a global level.
Speakers at the event – including Lord Cullen of Whitekirk (pictured), who chaired the public enquiry into the Piper Alpha disaster, and David Pritchard, co-chair of the Presidential Technical Commission for the Deepwater Horizon study group (US) – highlighted the fear of the workforce to voice safety concerns as being one of a number of factors restricting progress.
Pritchard told the conference the industry had to “do better” but that the number of incidents which had followed on from Macondo indicated that this was not happening.
Referring to Macondo, he said: “If you wanted to put it in a simple perspective, the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing.”
He added that, rather than focusing on the disaster itself, it was important to look at the build up to the event.
“With Macondo as well as other operations I look at, there were unmistakable forewarnings throughout the design and execution process.
“It can happen again, it will happen again – we cannot dismiss early warning signs.”
Lord Cullen, in his keynote address, reiterated the lessons of the Piper Alpha disaster, when he said: “Safety awareness at all levels should avoid any tendency to tolerate, cut corners, forget or fail to report, investigate and take lasting corrective action. That assumes, of course, a general commitment to safety which enables employees to report what has happened without fear of recrimination.”
The event, called Another Perspective on Risk – The Next Tipping Point, was the first international conference of its kind in the world and was organised by SPE Aberdeen. It saw hundreds of delegates attend the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre.
SPE Aberdeen’s Another Perspective committee chairman Ella Minty said: “Some people may wonder why SPE Aberdeen chose a topic that, at least in the UK, is generally dealt with by other organisations. The answer is very simple: the time is long overdue for this matter to reach the public domain and, until now, it hasn’t.
“Irrespective of whether we are working in the North Sea, Gulf of Mexico or the Indian Ocean we cannot have another loss of human life or environmental disaster. Or can we? Have we become complacent to major incidents and fatalities? Is the return on investment more important than human life?
“A tipping point can be constructive as much as it can be destructive and it is up to us – as a global industry – to decide which point of the tipping point we will be on.”
The panel session brought together a distinguished group of safety experts including Mark Griffon, member of the US Chemical Safety Investigation Board; Les Linklater, team leader of Step Change in Safety, Susan Mackenzie, Head of HSE Energy Division Hazardous Installations Directorate, Health And Safety Executive and Jake Molloy, regional organiser of the RMT union.
Speakers included Dr Tim Marsh, expert witness at the Safety Culture and Management of Change forums at the Cullen Inquiry; Lillian Espinoza-Gala, independent researcher and Member of Berkley University’s Centre for Catastrophic Risk Management (US); Jem Thomas, head of operations of Albany and consultant to the UK Government’s Stabilisation Unit and Thomson Reuters; William Libby, director of key accounts for Control Risks and the US lecturer and author Loren Steffy.
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