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The blowout of the Macondo well on April 20, 2010, led to enormous consequences for the individuals involved in the drilling operations, and for their families. Eleven workers on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig lost their lives and 16 others were seriously injured. There were also enormous consequences for the companies involved in the drilling operations, to the Gulf of Mexico environment, and to the economy of the region and beyond. The flow continued for nearly 3 months before the well could be completely killed, during which time, nearly 5 million barrels of oil spilled into the gulf.Macondo Well-Deepwater Horizon Blowout examines the causes of the blowout and provides a series of recommendations, for both the oil and gas industry and government regulators, intended to reduce the likelihood and impact of any future losses of well control during offshore drilling. According to this report, companies involved in offshore drilling should take a \"system safety\" approach to anticipating and managing possible dangers at every level of operation -- from ensuring the integrity of wells to designing blowout preventers that function under all foreseeable conditions-- in order to reduce the risk of another accident as catastrophic as the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill. In addition, an enhanced regulatory approach should combine strong industry safety goals with mandatory oversight at critical points during drilling operations.Macondo Well-Deepwater Horizon Blowout discusses ultimate responsibility and accountability for well integrity and safety of offshore equipment, formal system safety education and training of personnel engaged in offshore drilling, and guidelines that should be established so that well designs incorporate protection against the various credible risks associated with the drilling and abandonment process. This book will be of interest to professionals in the oil and gas industry, government decision makers, environmental advocacy groups, and others who seek an understanding of the processes involved in order to ensure safety in undertakings of this nature.

Failures during the drilling and exploitation of hydrocarbons that result in catastrophic offshore oil and gas accidents are relatively rare but if they occur the consequences can be catastrophic in terms of loss of life and environmental damage. Therefore, to gain insight into their prevention, the largest major offshore oil and gas accidents, those with more than 10 fatalities or with a large environmental impact, are analyzed in this article. Special attention is placed on fire as a cause and a consequence. Relevant technological and legislative changes and updates regarding safety that have followed such accidents and that can prevent potential future similar misfortunes are evaluated. Two main approaches to safety are compared: (1) the American prescriptive vs. (2) the European goal-oriented approach. The main causes of accidents are tested statistically in respect of failure probability, where the exact confidence limits for the estimated probabilities are computed. The results of the statistical test based on exact confidence intervals show that there is no significant difference between the analysed factors, which describe the main causes of offshore oil and gas accidents. Based on the small but carefully chosen group of 24 of the largest accidents, it can be concluded that there is no evidence of a difference between the categories of the main causes of accidents.

This article offers a concise overview of the best practices for safety in offshore oil and gas operations, focusing on the risks associated with various types of equipment, particularly on the risk of fire. It identifies specific machinery and systems that could pose hazards, assesses their potential impact on safety, and explores conditions that may lead to accidents. Some of the largest accidents were analyzed for their associations with fire hazards and specific equipment. Two primary regulatory approaches to offshore safety are examined: the prescriptive approach in the United States (US) and the goal-oriented approach in Europe. The prescriptive approach mandates strict compliance with specific regulations, while in the goal-oriented approach a failure to adhere to recognized best practices can result in legal accountability for negligence, especially concerning human life and environmental protection. This article also reviews achievements in safety through the efforts of regulatory authorities, industry collaborations, technical standards, and risk assessments, with particular attention given to the status of Mobile Offshore Drilling Units (MODUs). Contrary to common belief, the most frequent types of accidents are not those involving a fire/explosion caused by the failure of the Blowout Preventer (BOP) after a well problem has already started. Following analysis, it can be concluded that the most frequent type of accident typically occurs without fire and is due to material fatigue. This can result in the collapse of the facility, capsizing of the platform, and loss of buoyancy of mobile units, particularly in bad weather or during towing operations. It cannot be concluded that accidents can be more efficiently prevented under a specific type of safety regime, whether prescriptive or goal-oriented.

With the advances in technology and the automation of drilling platforms, the Anti-Collision System (ACS) has appeared as an affordable technology, which is intended to keep equipment on the drilling floor working harmoniously and to prevent the potential hazards associated with accidents. However, the specialty of the machinery on the drilling floor requires a distinguished structure for the ACS and a reliable collision-avoidance algorithm, which is not similar to any algorithm in other applications, such as automobiles and robotics. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehension of the configuration of an ACS in an Integrated Drilling System and to develop a practical anti-collision algorithm that can be applied to the machine arrangement for an offshore drilling operation. By analyzing the motions and using kinematic parameters, such as the speed and deceleration information of drilling equipment, a kinematic collision box algorithm is developed to eliminate the limitation of conventional algorithms. While the conventional collision-avoidance algorithm uses a collision box with fixed size, the kinematic collision box algorithm uses a collision box with a flexible scale that can be correspond to the velocity and deceleration rate of the equipment. Several operating scenarios are simulated by a visual model of ACS to authenticate the functionality of the proposed algorithm. The operation of the top drive is an outstanding scenario. Only 2.25 s are required to stop the top drive from its maximum velocity, and a conventional algorithm uses this number to create a fixed bounding box. Also, the kinematic collision box algorithm uses the real-time data of velocity and acceleration to adjust the scale of the bounding box when the speed of the top drive increases from 0 to its maximum value. The simulation result illustrates the reliability and advances of the kinematic collision box algorithm in performing the collision-avoidance function in ACS compared to the conventional algorithm.

PurposeEvery year, hundreds of people have died and thousands have been injured because of insufficient management of well control at oil and gas drilling and production sites. Major causes which have been reported in previous studies included uncontrollable blowouts and failure of blowout preventers because of insufficient safety practices. These onshore and offshore blowout disasters not only harm the work force but also critically affect the environment and marine life. In this research paper, a detailed quantitative survey and qualitative risk assessments (RA) have been carried out for assessing the potentially hazardous activities associated with well control along with their appropriate controls and risk reduction factors and mitigating measures in Middle East and south East Asian countries.Design/methodology/approachThe sequential explanatory research design has been adopted in this study. Whereas, descriptive statistical approach has been used for the quantitative data analysis of this study. While, in-depth interview approach has been used for qualitative data collection. Similarly, what-if analysis method has been adopted in this study for the identification of effective safety and health risk mitigating factors because it provides in-depth information from health and safety environment experts.FindingsThe cumulative quantitative results based on the response from Saudi Arabian drilling industry have indicated that the well control operation is highly hazardous then Malaysian and Pakistani oil and gas industries. Likewise, findings from what-if analysis approach demonstrate that the drilling crewmembers have repetitively faced life threatening hazards which occur (safety and chemical) during well control onshore and offshore operation because of oil base mud, confined space at site, pinch points and falling during working on blow out preventers. According to the overall result, respondents have highly recommended engineering and administrative hazard controlling factors as most suitable for the elimination of safety and chemical hazards during well control activities.Practical implicationsBesides, the developed methodological framework for the identification of suitable hazard controls can also be effectively used for potential hazards reorganization and identification of suitable hazard controls for other drilling and production industries and regions for accident prevention and safety and health management.Originality/valueThis is a first comparative research study which has been carried out in Malaysian, Saudi Arabian and Pakistani onshore and offshore oil and gas industries for well control health and safety management and reorganization of most effective hazards mitigating factors at drilling sites.

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Work on accident-proneness began in 1919 in a British munitions factory. A study by two psychologists, Major Greenwood and Hilda M. Woods, found that accidents were unevenly distributed among workers even though all of them had the same safety training, the same precautionary advice and the same safety equipment. A similar study in the 1920s by Karl Marbe indicated that people who have one accident are more likely to have another one than people who never had one before.