Oil and Gas Production System Safety Events: 2018 Annual Report

BTS Productshttps://doi.org/10.21949/15040982019PDFStatistical ReportHu, Patricia S.Schmidt, Rolf R.Collia, DemetraUnited States. Department of Transportation. Bureau of Transportation StatisticsUnited States. Department of Transportation. Bureau of Transportation StatisticsUnited StatesOffshore oil industryGas industrySafety equipmentSafety engineeringFail safe systemsFailure analysisOil wellsSafety valvesMechanical failureSafety and Pollution Prevention EquipmentEquipment failureOil and Gas IndustryGOMGulf of MexicoSafeOCSSPPEThe SafeOCS program was established in August 2013 through an interagency agreement between BTS and the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE). The SafeOCS program is a resource to help industry members capture and share key lessons from significant near misses and other safety events. Its objective is to identify, prevent, and mitigate potential high-consequence risks by measuring and analyzing failure data while protecting the anonymity of the data providers (e.g., operators and equipment manufacturers). The SafeOCS program includes the reporting of safety and pollution prevention equipment (SPPE) failures as mandated under 30 CFR 250.803. Background information on the regulatory requirements is provided in Appendix A. Title 30 CFR 250.803 requires operators to submit SPPE failure reports when specific SPPE does not perform as designed. This requirement incorporates the industry reporting practices found in relevant American Petroleum Institute (API) Standards and Specifications (see Appendix B). New to the 2018 analyses is a reconciliation of the SPPE data reported to SafeOCS, using BSEE Incident of Noncompliance data (INC data) and Well Activity Report data (WAR data). Use of these additional data sources resulted in a more complete set of failures that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico during 2018 operations. Importantly, SPPE failures identified in the INC and WAR data were used only as supporting information and have not been added to the total number of SPPE failure events reported to SafeOCS.123