[QUOTE=alcor;83411]The biggest revelation concerning the ‘inquisition’ is the fact that all people asking questions are untrained, untutored and have absolutely no experience in the industry. The questions ‘touch’ on the relevant subjects but the questions are never deep enough or direct enough. The drilling industry is unlike any other and should not be compared to the typical onshore factory where systems are completely defined. The drilling industry is more dynamic and requires interpretation when trends change.[/QUOTE]
Precisely. Probabilistic risk analysis and fault tree analysis are only relevant when applied to components like the BOP. When it comes to actual operations, the closest thing to process security is John Boyd’s OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide Act) model of conflict. His insight was that you have to run your loop faster than the enemy (or in this case, the well) can react. If you get behind you’re toast. Drilling is exploratory, and the essence of exploration is you’re never sure what you’re going to run into.
[QUOTE=alcor;83411]The people conducting the trial can never hope to understand the industry without experiencing work on the rigs. They are simply lost and it is these lost souls who are making decisions, commentary, and law on a subject they know nothing about.[/QUOTE]
Rig experience is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it gives you knowledge that others don’t have, especially tacit knowledge, the stuff nobody writes down. On the other hand, it can prevent you from looking at your system from the outside and in the larger context of what may be relevant technology and procedures from other fields. A mixture of insiders and outsiders operating with mutual respect for each other’s backgrounds is the best analysis team in my experience.
[QUOTE=alcor;83411]So, what have they done? They’ve looked at every conceivable way of prosecuting BP with the majority of consideration being applied to unrelated incidents.[/QUOTE]
I’m afraid I don’t view the March 8 incident as unrelated; 30 plus minutes of not knowing the well was flowing looks an awful lot like what happened later. The BP/TO reaction to that incident was remarkably slack. There is a well-known process for dealing with near fatal near misses that I learned 50 years ago in Curtis LeMay’s Air Force and I view what the BP wells team leader did in response with astonishment.
[QUOTE=alcor;83411]We, in the industry, are making the equivalent of ‘Inflow Test’ decisions every single day. And, we are monitoring well volumes and pressure from the time we latch on until the time we unlatch the BOP every single minute of the day. So, it is incorrect for anyone to consider that the action taking place on the Macondo was in some way an unusual scenario. This is blatantly untrue. Every well around the world is posing different problems and it is up to the crews on each vessel to make immediate analysis and report accordingly to onshore engineers and supervisors when these problems arise. Often, scenarios arise where immediate action is taken due to the fact that procedures and learning are in place. The Driller will shut in a well or perform a flow check any time he wishes. The Driller has considerable responsibility and this is the way the industry must continue to work. His ‘culture’ of monitoring and responding to the trends is as important as the loggers and they will always pick up on these trends faster than any ‘onshore eyes’ who may want to be in a position to ‘advise’ or take ‘responsibility’ for all action. It’s not a job for anyone, it’s a job for they who can handle a crisis and bring it under control with a calm authority. Naturally, his backbone is always the Toolpusher who will sanction all activity based on clear understanding of procedures, principles, and above all, a culture of safety analysis.[/QUOTE]
Which why I find it so remarkable that the industry invests so little in the training of their people. The whole purpose of simulator training is to show people what a crisis looks like and the consequences of not following procedures. The Air Force navigator trainer I helped design was used in the investigation of a fatal crash where a crew was given a faulty descent vector and flew straight into a mountain. The flight profile was programmed into the simulator and displayed to students with (typically) the words “this is what it looks like to die on the job.” You could see the crew thought they were minutes from home, relaxed, and ignored all the warning signs. I watched a run and it was impressively scary.
[QUOTE=alcor;83411]No two wells are the same. But, the procedures and principles we use to drill the wells do not change and they come from the Contractor and are endorsed by the Operator with aspects of the operational procedure altered as highlighted in any Bridging Document. So, if no two wells are the same then every single day on each well is different, is dynamic, and therefore, requires constant scrutiny, pressure analysis and volume control.
So, the Macondo is completely unremarkable when we study what the crews faced on the day of the ‘Inflow Test’ And ‘Volume Control’ during the displacement. A blowout was never inevitable, and the well could have been controlled if MONITORING and INTERPRETATION of pressure and volume was performed correctly. In a nutshell, the doghouse was the place where decisions were made to either have a blowout or simply a well control situation. If TO procedures for monitoring the well volumes had been followed the Deepwater Horizon would be happily drilling elsewhere today.[/QUOTE]
Which is why I find the reaction to the March 8 violation of procedures so strange. “Hey guys, you missed a kick. Let’s be more careful next time.”
[QUOTE=alcor;83411]Regarding the Swaco mud Engineer’s comments and testimony, he correctly states that BP have the authority on the procedure, but the OIM has to sanction the procedure, afterall, his men are conducting the operation. It better fit with his plans.[/QUOTE]
I still can’t get used to the whole split responsibility structure on that rig; it’s about as far from Crew/Bridge Resource Management as you can get. At least two people (junior mudlogger and the toolpusher who was going off shift) questioned how things were being done, a mixed BP/TO group discussed the test results for the better part of an hour and nobody said boo.
[QUOTE=alcor;83411]The truth is that there was no detail to the procedure and no-one questioning him asked why he hadn’t emphasised the importance of volume control. But, he was the man in place to DEFINE how the displacement and control of pit volumes was to be performed. He didn’t. He went to bed.
And, this is apparently the way things were done throughout the GOM according to his testimony. Therefore, in the GOM, when a well’s barriers are defined as passed rigs in the GOM stop monitoring volumes. But, they forget that barriers can break down at any time. Other companies around the world have it ‘cast in stone’ that volumes are recorded from the time of latch until the time of unlatching the BOP from the well.[/QUOTE]
It would be interesting to know whether TO operates significantly differently in Norway, say, than the GOM. That is, is it an issue of corporate culture or something that is location-specific. It would be dismaying to learn that the companies cut whatever corners the coastal state lets them get away with.
Cheers,
Earl