Most people are under the impression that changes in offshore safety began after the 2010 loss of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. However, that shift began with an accident in 2005 in Texas and the following investigative report in 2007.

“The report stated that companies involved in the accident were too concentrated on personnel safety and not enough on process safety,” Lyndol Dew, senior vice president, worldwide operations, Diamond Offshore, told participants at the plenary session March 6 during the SPE/IADC 2013 Drilling Conference in Amsterdam.

“As I read the report, I gathered up my team and I said, ‘Could this be us? Are we so concerned about the level of the loss of life; actual slips, trips, and falls; and lost-time incident reports that we are missing the big picture?’”

The company then began looking at exactly how to define the processes for an offshore drilling contractor. Process safety for a drilling contractor involves the things done to prevent multiple fatalities. The first process is a stability event. If a rig turns over, nothing else matters. It is a bad day for everyone. The second process involves well control. Obviously, that is a major problem for a drilling contractor. The third one realistically is a rig abandonment process. “Do you really want to put people in the ocean in lifeboats? The answer for us is no,” Dew said.

“We came up with some goals that we’ve promulgated throughout our entire fleet since 2007. These goals say this is our process safety and this is the direction we are going. The first one is ‘keep the pointy end up.’ That pointy end is the derrick. If we can keep the pointy end up and we do all the things we can to keep the pointy end up, that is what is important to us, and that is our process safety. “The second one is ‘keep the hydrocarbons where they belong,’ whether they belong in the reservoir or through some production spread,” Dew said. “We define where the hydrocarbons belong and make sure to keep them there.” The third is “don’t give up the ship,” which is a quote from Oliver Hazard Perry in the battle for Lake Erie in the War of 1812. It is important to realize that putting people in lifeboats should be avoided at all costs, especially in rough seas. The company created a plaque with these three goals that is posted at every watch station on the rig. “There is a quote at the bottom of the plaque,” Dew added. “It says, ‘Your actions are the key to fleet integrity assurance.’ This is how a drilling contractor delivers wells in a critical environment.”

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