Post-Macondo Focus on Safety
Authors: Arscott Lyn , Moreau Roland 
Published: March 2020

Editor’s Note: The oil and gas industry is under public scrutiny like never before on a host of health, safety, and environmental issues. These concerns are already affecting how companies operate and interact with the public. This series is intended to shed light on how the industry is actively confronting these challenges and how it should address them going forward.

Ten years ago, on 20 April 2010, the oil and gas industry suffered a significant human and environmental catastrophe, and a major blow to its reputation. The Deepwater Horizon semi-submersible drilling rig was preparing to temporarily abandon the Macondo well in 5,000 ft of water in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) when the well blew and ignited causing a massive explosion that killed 11 people. The incident resulted in an oil spill of 4 to 5 million bbl (the biggest offshore oil spill in US history) and a cost to the operator (BP) in the order of $60 billion.

This seminal event in the history of the industry caused a moratorium on drilling in the GOM which could have been extended indefinitely but for a comprehensive response by the industry to convince the regulators that the industry could operate safely. Immediately following the incident, the US oil and gas industry assembled four Joint Industry Task Forces (JITFs) to focus on critical areas of GOM activity (American Petroleum Institute, www.api.org); President Obama established a national commission to provide an analysis of the incident and make appropriate recommendations (National Commission on the BP/Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling 2011); and the Secretary of the Interior requested the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) to form a committee to examine probable causes and identify means to avoid future occurrences (National Academies Press 2011).

This article outlines the status of two initiatives: (1) the current National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) program to enhance offshore safety; and (2) a new initiative by regulators and industry to improve the collection of safety data. The article concludes with a summary of the current focus areas to enhance offshore safety. The contribution of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) to some of these initiatives is described. It is important to note that although the incident occurred in US waters, the lessons learned are applicable to oil and gas operations worldwide, including land operations.

The Gulf Research Program Part of the criminal settlement between the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and BP/Transocean was the establishment of an endowment fund of $500 million to be spent over 30 years to conduct science-based programs in three general areas of concern in the GOM and other continental shelf regions: (1) offshore energy system safety; (2) human health; and (3) environmental resources. The management of this fund was awarded to the NASEM, which established a program called “The Gulf Research Program” (GRP). NASEM was selected by the DOJ to administer the program because of its excellent reputation in organizing appropriate experts in the nation to provide advice on critical science and technology issues.