Thinking the unthinkable

Feb. 10, 2003
Accidents happen. Risks abound. The unthinkable occurs with appalling regularity.

Accidents happen. Risks abound. The unthinkable occurs with appalling regularity.

Tangible testimony to these abstractions now lies in charred pieces strewn between Texas and Louisiana. On Feb. 1, 2003, something went tragically wrong during a marvelous operation that repetition had turned routine. Something made the space orbiter Columbia break apart as it reentered the atmosphere after a 16-day mission and crash, killing seven astronauts.

Before the Columbia disaster, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had safely launched and landed space shuttles 111 times. Its only prior shuttle failure was the 1986 explosion on takeoff of the Challenger, which also killed seven.

Obvious risks

The shuttle program's safety record obviously suffers from the Columbia tragedy. Against the obvious risks of space travel, however, it's—what? What's acceptable here? Is a failure rate below 2% by mission count tolerable, given the engineering challenge and potential reward, when the failures have claimed 14 lives?

Questions like these receive strong attention after catastrophe. They should. But the answers are foreordained. The losses, however painful, will be tolerated. The risks, however great, will be confronted. Space exploration, because it satisfies complex needs of science and human yearning, will continue. And it should.

Modern oil and gas operations, especially exploration and production, resemble space travel. They take human intervention into inhospitable realms. They employ amazing engineering. They're risky. And the risks grow as success builds—as drilling depths and well complexity increase, for example; as completions tap reservoirs with hellish pressures and temperatures; and as offshore drilling and production move into ever deeper water. In fact, the offshore industry began using the space analogy when its water-depth frontier was 1,000 ft, which correlates in the space analogy roughly with revolving someone around Earth a few times inside a metal cone.

In exploration and production, as in space travel, accidents happen. They're usually small—but not always. They sometimes disturb the environment. They sometimes hurt and kill people. According to the Association of Oil & Gas Producers, the upstream industry worldwide sustained 5 fatalities/100 million hr of work during 2001. Of 101 total deaths that year, 30% resulted from vehicle accidents, which happen in all industries. The industry manages its safety risks well. But it can't escape them.

Like the space industry, it must never ignore the unthinkable. The 1988 explosion of the Piper Alpha platform in the UK North Sea, which killed 167 workers, was unthinkable. So was the sequential misfortune that sank the P-36 semisubmersible production platform off Brazil in 1999, killing 11.

Mishaps identical to those are unlikely. Government and industry responses to the Piper Alpha and P-36 tragedies identified causes and installed precautions. The challenge is the potential catastrophe with a cause not yet identified or sufficiently addressed. The upstream oil and gas industry's next unthinkable accident is probably one not yet given much thought.

What might it be? Blowout of a deepwater well that kills hundreds of people, spills thousands of barrels of oil, and destroys sea life? How about failure of a multilateral completion in an onshore well on a breezy, dry day next to a forest upwind of a town?

Can't happen? Maybe. But if the industry ever relaxes its standards or tolerates carelessness, something just as unthinkable surely will happen instead.

Secondary tragedy

A secondary tragedy is developing in the aftermath of the Columbia crash. Investigation will uncover the accident's cause. Whatever it is, the cause will involve people. Someone will have performed a wrong task, or forgotten to perform an essential one, or specified a faulty material, or overlooked a design flaw, or failed to anticipate a hazard, or—the list never ends. The mistake or mistakes will not have been deliberate. No one wanted the Columbia to crash. But one or more cause will be identified, and people—whether or not they're identified publicly—will find themselves attached to it. The orbiter's secondary tragedy is the psychological struggle looming for them.

The oil and gas industry has a way to honor those who died aboard Columbia. It can adopt the disaster as a reminder never to ignore the unthinkable. And it can use the consequent suffering to renew among all of its workers the determination that, yes, accidents happen—but not here, not now, not ever.