US ‘near miss’ offshore safety program a ‘near success’ - Fuel for Thought

An ambitious effort to collect “near miss” data from US offshore drillers has stalled, but regulators are working to get the program back in gear.

The program to identify leading indicators of loss of well control events was launched after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident. It is patterned after the similar, successful partnership between the Federal Aviation Administration and NASA to collect data on aviation mishaps.

But offshore regulators have found that creating a similar system for the exploration and production industry is incredibly complex and challenging, despite the existence of the FAA model.

There has been a “lukewarm response at this stage,” said Doug Morris, chief of offshore regulatory programs at the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. “Some of this is getting the confidence of the industry that the reports will be protected. We anticipated that going in.”

The SafeOCS program was launched in May 2015. Confidential reports are collected by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, which is supposed to publish results annually, including to the general public.

Regulators already have ways of evaluating the causes of accidents that happen. Explosions and pipeline leaks are investigated and lessons applied to preventing future disasters.

But collecting data on close calls—accidents that almost happened, but didn’t— would serve as an early warning system, allowing regulators to identify problems before they become disasters.

Despite the commitment from some larger companies to join, cooperation has been pretty limited, Morris said.

“We had a couple of larger companies make a verbal commitment to participate,” Morris said.

“Most of these companies collect this information, but don’t share it across the industry.”

To boost the program, BSEE held a two-day summit with the Society of Petroleum Engineers in April. The groups, which included exploration companies such as Shell and BP, and other agencies, discussed what kind of data should be collected, how to keep it confidential, and how to analyze it in such a way as to encourage participation.

One of the key findings is that collecting data is not enough. The industry needs to reform its culture, from one of blame and responding to individual incidents, to one that encourages and even rewards efforts to put safety first.

“Looking at the FAA model, data collection is important but cultural routines also need to be addressed,” the SPE’s final report, issued in September, said. “A better safety culture and willingness and incentive to share information within each company is needed.”

That goal is incredibly hard to achieve—much harder, it turns out, than designing a system to collect and analyze information.

“The culture change process is more like a journey than a project,” concluded a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences.

“In a fragmented, competitive, heterogeneous and ever-changing offshore oil and gas industry, supported by multiple regulators and industry associations, this journey will not be short and straightforward, but rather full of challenging twists and turns.”

Where do we go from here?

To address some of these challenges, BSEE recently expanded the SafeOCS program to include confidential reporting of equipment failure data that was recently mandated under the department’s well control rule.

Unlike the voluntary near miss data, offshore operators are required to submit these reports.

The expansion, announced last month, gives the industry the option to report directly to BSEE or confidentially through SafeOCS.

One goal of this change is to get industry more familiar, and more comfortable, with using the SafeOCS system. The idea is that familiarity will breed confidence, which will increase participation in the near miss reporting project.

“We’ll get more comprehensive reporting if sent to SafeOCS,” Morris said.

One vitally important safety issue that BSEE hopes to collect data on through SafeOCS is the failure of bolts and connectors used in subsea blowout preventers and risers. While the agency has identified the problem as critical, it has not issued any regulation because more data is needed.

The bolt issue is the “poster child for why the industry needs a comprehensive reporting system,” Morris said.

Getting a confidential reporting system in place has been slow going. More than 18 months after it was established, SafeOCS has yet to fulfill its promise.

But regulators seem aware of the enormous challenges ahead and are committed to meeting them.