While safety has been uppermost in the minds of drilling industry personnel for years, the industry’s safety performance has been relatively flat in recent years, according to statistics tracked by the International Association of Drilling Contractors (IADC).
The lack of recent improvement in industry’s safety performance is attributed to the great surge in activity and a shortage of qualified personnel, coupled with a growing emphasis on complex wells and drilling in harsh environments.
“During the past 25 years, safety performance in the drilling industry has continuously improved,” says Claus Chur, 2006 IADC chairman and director, Europe, Middle East, and Russia for KCA Deutag, Aberdeen. “Keeping the trend flat in recent years is, in itself, an achievement, considering the significant increases in drilling activity and the associated recruitment and training of new personnel.”
Jim Nixon, president and CEO of Varel International, Dallas, contends that, historically during drilling booms, safety suffers.
“This is due to the rapid influx of new field personnel who are reporting to newly minted field supervisors,” he says. “But (and thankfully) drilling accidents have been flat in recent years, while drilling activity has been on the rise. This reduction is a testimony to the leadership and strong training programs instituted by service companies and E&P companies.
“So this year, as the rate of growth in North American drilling activity eases, we should expect safety measures to strengthen even more as personnel experience increases while hiring slows.”
Technology evolution
Much of the improvement in industry safety of the past 25 years can be laid at the doorstep of evolving technology, according to Robert Bloom, senior vice-president and chief technology officer for National Oilwell Varco, Houston.
“There are a myriad of technologies and innovations that were once considered highly specialized and experimental that are now being found on even the simplest land rigs,” he says. “They are all focused on removing personnel from the inherently hazardous areas of the drilling operation. Mechanization, remote machine operation, advanced monitoring, and automation are all contributing to rigs with smaller crews and safer operating environments.
“Readily available, affordable, ‘off-the-shelf’ technologies such as rugged computers, electronics, and sensing devices have really opened the door to make modern drilling rigs much safer than their predecessors. We are confident that these innovations will continue to improve safety performance in our industry.”
Charles Jones, executive vice-president and chief operating officer for Hydril Co. LP, Houston, concurs: “Getting people out of harm’s way is key. BOP maintenance is by definition hazardous; the area you’re working in is beneath the drillfloor, it’s dirty, wet, and slippery. Anything you can do to minize the time you have people exposed to that will reduce accident incidents.
“We introduced a new ram BOP several years ago based upon saving rig time, but we didn’t realize at the time that our customers saw the value in terms of safer operations, as the product reduced the time a rig hand spends beneath the drill floor.”
Changing culture
While technology advances have reduced risk to drilling industry personnel, a change in organizational cultures will provide the next step-change in improving drilling operations safety, says Chur.
“I do not see any specific technology that will significantly impact our safety performance in the next few years,” he points out. “After a decade focusing on safer equipment and applying improved safety regulations, drilling contractors have been very successful implementing new management systems and processes designed to help people manage safety.”
David Mannon, senior vice-president and chief operating officer for Parker Drilling Co., Houston, cites the company’s new Quality Management System for its “unprecedented success” in safety performance in recent years. In 2006, Parker was logging record low recordable incident totals after achieving the lowest such rate among IADC members in 2005.
“We attribute this success not only to a continual emphasis on safety, but to our new QMS initiative and a world-class training facility,” he says. “The focus on continuous improvement is a critical element in the approach to safety.”
