Steffy: 11 deaths refute offshore drilling safety myths

Crosses on the beach in Grand Isle, La., bear the names of 11 men who died in the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Photo: Wendy Wilson-Billiot Crosses on the beach in Grand Isle, La., bear the names of 11 men who died in the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Photo: Wendy Wilson-Billiot Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Steffy: 11 deaths refute offshore drilling safety myths 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

The wooden crosses rise from the beach in Grand Isle, La., each bearing the name of one of the men who died 40 miles offshore two years ago.

The 11 crosses stand against the myth of 50,000 wells.

The refrain is so common in the oil industry that in the two years since the Deepwater Horizon disaster, it has become a tired cliché. The industry, the saying goes, drilled 50,000 wells in the Gulf of Mexico and has only had one major accident.

It's a verbal blanket of denial that prevents fundamental change in the way wells are drilled at depths greater than 5,000 feet.

"You have to lose the denier," said David Pritchard, a Houston petroleum engineer and drilling safety expert. "You have to realize that these wells aren't the same as the 50,000 we have on the shelf."

As a member of the Deepwater Horizon Study Group, a team of researchers and industry experts assembled by the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at the University of California at Berkeley, Pritchard analyzed well information from a database collected from offshore operators. His conclusion: as of 2009, the industry had only drilled only 43 wells as complex as one the Deepwater Horizon was over at the time of the accident - far less than 50,000.

Wells drilled at shallower depths are a distinctly different type of operation. Ultradeep wells - those in 5,000 of water feet or more - face intense pressure, frigid temperatures and other conditions that make them more complicated than anything the industry has drilled before.

"These wells really increase in complexity as you get into the deeper water," Pritchard said. "I'm not sure the industry addresses the greater complexity in well design planning or execution."

In the two years since the disaster, all the participants - from BP to the industry to the government - have vowed changes. The industry has revised some of its practices, the government has beefed up some regulations and Congress, in keeping with its recent track record, has done nothing.

Compromising safety

The changes that have been made, though, ignore the deep-rooted denial that still pervades many offshore drilling operations. In discussions in recent weeks with safety experts, a disturbing pattern emerges of an industry so steeped in self-confidence and so bound by economic demands that basic safety practices often are compromised.

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, whose probe of the accident is ongoing, has found that companies that operate refineries haven't transferred some of their basic safety procedures to their offshore operations. Offshore rigs have far fewer automatic safety systems, for example, and rely much more on "high touch" or human factors to prevent disaster.

"Unlike the U.S. offshore regulatory system, the 'onshore' process safety requirements are more rigorous and apply both to operators and key contractors," the CSB said in a statement Thursday.

The reason for the lack of change, not surprisingly, is the expense. At a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars a day, companies don't want offshore rigs sitting idle.

Poor well designs

The need to get wells drilled quickly also can result in poor well designs, such as the one BP used on the Macondo project, or result in delays and other problems that the industry broadly refers to as "nonproductive time."

"The nonproductive times, the failure to meet objectives, and the outright failures are a pretty good indicator that things just aren't quite right," Pritchard said. "The rig schedule is a key driver that is really detrimental to safety overall and process safety in particular."

With far fewer rigs than offshore leases, operators often have trouble finding the right equipment for a project. Under federal rules, leaseholders can lose their drilling rights to an area if they don't drill wells within a specific period. If regulators and the industry developed a system in which companies could extend leases based on rig availability, some economic pressure to cut corners might ease, Pritchard said.

"These wells can be drilled safely if there is rigor in design and in best practice execution," he said.

Meanwhile, on the beach in Grand Isle, 11 crosses stand as a reminder of steep price to be paid when there isn't.

Loren Steffy, loren.steffy@chron.com, is the Chronicle's business columnist. His commentary appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Follow him online at blog.chron.com/lorensteffy, www.facebook.com/LorenSteffypage and twitter.com/lsteffy.