In this episode of the Oil and Gas Sound Off Podcast, Joe Perino gives an update on the sharing of safety data in the offshore oil and gas industry.
In this podcast, Joe discusses:
- State of sharing data in offshore drilling oil and gas
- Recent SPE meeting on data sharing
- New agreement between BSEE, Center for Offshore Safety (COS), US Dept of Transportation (DOT)
- Benefits and challenges to new offshore data sharing arrangement
Listen to the Sound Off Oil and Gas Podcast below:
History of BSEE
For more on the evolution of BSEE, COS in wake of the Deepwater Horizon incident, listen to Joe’s podcast ‘Offshore Drilling Safety: Deepwater Horizon to BSEE’ and visit our BSEE resource page.
We hope you are enjoying the expertise and insight that Joe brings to our audience, and be sure to drop any comments, questions or feedback into the comment section below.
Of course, our Oil 101 members can also reach out in the discussion forums.
Relevant Links:
BSEE – Bureau for Safety Environmental Enforcement
Podcast: Offshore Drilling Safety: Deepwater Horizon to BSEE
Oil 101 – A FREE Introduction to Oil and Gas
EKT Interactive Oil and Gas Podcast Network
Offshore Drilling Resource Page – EKT Interactive
Transcript:
Hello, I’m Joe Perino and welcome to Sound Off.
This podcast is part of the EKT interactive learning network and is brought to you by Oil 101, a free 10 part introduction to the oil and gas industry.
In this podcast I’d like to give everybody an update on what’s been going on with the Center of Offshore Safety. BSEE, SPE and the sharing of safety data for the offshore drilling industry. As I speak it’s January 2017 and
I attended a SPE sponsored meeting in mid-December 16, in which it was attended by, among others, Doug Morris, the Chief of Office of Offshore Regulatory Programs for BSEE, Charlie Williams, Executive Director for the Center for Offshore Safety, and Demetria Collia, a Program Director in the Bureau of Transportation Statistics in the Department of Transportation.
In this meeting it was announced that SPE, COS and BSEE had come to an agreement to utilize the Bureau of Transportation’s statistics department to gather and analyze safety data for the offshore industry.
Why is this a good idea?
It addresses a couple of concerns that you have in the industry.
One of them is the safety of the data and the confidentiality of those people who are handling this data.
One of the benefits of working with the federal government is that if you are a contractor or an employee and you violate your agreement with the government, you may be subject to a felony and be prosecuted.
This would be different if it were simply two private companies agreeing to store the data, you would have to have a lawsuit in that case. The idea of using the Bureau of Transportation and arm of the government to do this should lay a number of the concerns of many of the oil companies for sharing their data.
A second benefit of this is that you get an extremely capable department, the Bureau of Statistics in the transportation group. They’re very skilled at gathering and analyzing the data.
A third benefit of this is that anything that has been analysed and studied by the Bureau of Transportation’s statistics department, cannot and will not be shared with BSEE for the purposes of enforcement of regulations. There’s a firewall there.
That should also add additional confidence to oil companies who operate in offshore so that they know that their data is being safely and confidentially held.
Last but not least, the final benefit of this new sharing arrangement is that the Center for Offshore Safety no longer has track all of this information manually and do the analysis. Their responsibility has now been shifted to the Bureau of Transportation.
Where does this leave us?
There are still a few questions that come up.
Number one, does this mean that we will eliminate the redundancy around drilling? As you know the IADC also tracks drilling safety data and reports it.
A second concern that I continue to have is that this arrangement of course does not address the remaining issue of tracking all of the contractor information that is being generated out there. By that I mean the certifications for various for various contractors who are working on platforms, drill ships and so forth, as they move around working in the offshore industry.
There still needs to be a solution for that and I would still look to cause, to initiate something in that area, but to date nothing’s happened, but progress has been made. Step by step we’ll eventually get there and I look forward to seeing new developments in 2017.
Again, if you have a question or comment about this podcast we’d like to hear from you. Thanks for listening.
