Flight Safety Moment-Deepwater Horizon Disaster ICRC

1. Flight Safety Moment-Deepwater Horizon DisasterICRC/Bob Jacobs ESTS Staff Meeting February 8, 2011

6. Sources of Paralysis Failure to train for the worst. Crew members trained to respond to usual range of well problems. Unprepared for a major blowout followed by explosions, fires and a total loss of power. Analogy: training for a category 1 hurricane, but never planning for a hundred-year storm. Crew frozen by shear complexity of Horizon’s defenses and by the policies that explained when the were to be deployed. One emergency system alone was controlled by 30 buttons. Crew had detailed handbook on how to respond to signs of blowout, yet emergency protocols often urged rapid action while also cautioning against overreaction.

8. Parallels to ESTS Risky work: drilling fast into a highly pressurized, three-mile-deep reservoir of oil and gas, which can be highly problematic in the Gulf of Mexico’s unstable and porous formations. Deepwater Horizon’s crew was some of the best at what they do (drilled deepest well on earth the year prior to the failure). Common response to problems – how to make sure they never happen again (crew warned just weeks before blowout about letting down their guard based on a similar, but less deadly/spectacular incident on a Transocean rig in the British North Sea). Active safety program, the boss of the rig was actually receiving an award for diligence in performing a derrick (crane) safety inspection at the time of the blowout. This gesture was typical of the potent safety culture on the Horizon, where before every job, no matter how routine, crew members were required to write out a plan identifying all potential hazards. Despite the long hours and harsh conditions, injuries were remarkably rare. So rare that two BP executives and the two senior Transocean officials had flown out earlier in the day to praise the crew’s safety performance. Tight deadlines and budgetary impacts (e.g. executive and crew bonuses tied to meeting or beating schedules).

11. References “Deepwater Horizon’s Final Hours” by David Barstow, David Rohde and Stephanie Saul. Published in the New York Times, December 25, 2010. “Deepwater Horizon Crew Warned Over Safety Weeks Before Explosion” by Ben Casselman (NewCore) . Captured from myFox Tampa Bay.