Are We Really Learning from Major Accidents in Drilling Operations?

Are we really learning from major accidents in Drilling operations?

Claudio Castañeda - Well Integrity Leader

EQUION Energia Ltd

Recently, we past the 25th anniversary of the Piper alpha disaster and also three years after Macondo incident where lives were lost, significant impact to the environment not to mention economic and reputation effects.

In the onshore drilling operations, people tend to think that this major problems are only associated to the offshore drilling, where in the middle of the sea no one can help except you. WRONG!!! Well control whether at the sea or land can take people´s life and cause companies to be out of business in an instant.

IADC, CCPS, OSHA, API have made efforts to bring process safety to the top priorities issuing several documents and rules that help operators and drilling contractors to find a systematic way to enhance HSE while adopting process safety principles by enforcing mainly hard barriers -equipment, process, to “soft” barriers people competence and performance as a way to “measure” how are doing safer our operations.

EQUION taking advantage of its legacy - Former BP Colombia has implemented a process safety strategy for its drilling, completions and interventions operations in the Casanare foothills jointly with major drilling and service companies to address major risks including: well control, pumping fluids, managing heavy loads and losing well integrity which have created in Colombia a new culture towards PS and a new way to conduct business in a responsible way although our regulations still far away from a demanding point and thus most of the operators are really behind and experiencing serious incidents related mainly to people being injured and spills affecting the environment.

As mentioned above, the PS strategy establish a number of requirements and associated KPIs for each one of the four pillars: Equipment, processes, people and the way performance help to achieve a true culture towards process safety in our drilling operations.

September/2013