Monthly Reflections August 2026

Monthly Reflections August 2026

Dear Colleagues,

The end of August marks my first 6 months in role. I have read a lot, asked a lot and learned a lot. I would like to thank everyone who has helped to onboard and to educate me. The quieter period in August has allowed me to reflect on my role, the role of IOGP and the role we all play in our ambition to eliminate fatalities, permanent impairments and catastrophic process safety events. I have several topics I would like to reflect on this month that are a key part to meeting our ambition.

Curiosity and Conversations

Curiosity is a fundamental part of a strong safety culture. Much has been written on it as an enabler to open conversations, psychological safety and engagement as well as the more obvious identification of risks and hazards. We have all been through a stage of intense curiosity as young children. For those of us whose curiosity has perhaps reduced since then it is worth re-developing it. My ‘ah-ha’ moment came after 2 years in Iraq trying to persuade the locals I worked with to keep their seatbelts on when leaving the oilfield boundary for their drive home. My frustration at failing in this challenge I had set myself sparked a deeper set of open questions, exposing the real reason: wearing a seatbelt would reveal that the vehicle occupants worked for an International Oil Company and would be higher value kidnap targets, a risk perceived to be higher than a road traffic accident (which were themselves frequent and severe at the time). Wow! My eyes were opened. I finally understood. Then began the search for a solution to mitigate both road and kidnap risks.

I love the 4D set of questions (What’s different? What’s difficult? What’s dangerous? What’s dumb?) to generate the right conversations around risks and hazards, which might themselves be created by impractical procedures or requirements which would never be flagged without open, uninhibited conversation on work as done verses work as imagined.

Curiosity and conversations are essential ingredients to safety performance improvement.

Collaboration in Action – Wells Expert Committee – Celebrating 15 Years of IOGP Work

Well construction and well work activities remain some of the most significant major accident hazards in the industry. I have spent considerable time supporting the IOGP Wells Expert Committee (WEC) in August. The WEC celebrated 15 years of collaboration to prevent and mitigate high consequence well control events since it was formed following the Macondo well disaster. My deeper understanding of the work the IOGP member experts and industry partners do in this area reinforces all that is good about sharing learnings and experience in pursuit of a very compelling common goal. The well control incident sharing and insights inform multiple work steams including well control systems, competency & training, subsea well response, pore pressure fracture gradient and carbon capture & storage wells. The work is both extensive and extensively consulted in the industry and by regulators around the globe. I am pleased to see the close collaboration with other industry associations, drilling contractors, service contractors and equipment suppliers. It is only through working together that we can achieve lasting improvement in safety performance. The IOGP wells work will be presented at events in Budapest, London, Amsterdam, Singapore and Rio in September alone and also in Stavanger in October.

Final reflections

I will spend much of the rest of 2026 travelling and hope to meet many of you (IOGP members, industry colleagues and stakeholders) at the conferences, committee meetings and other events I will join. This is a key part of my role in IOGP – to make connections, to facilitate the right conversations, to provide a safe space for difficult topics to be debated and to enable the broader oil and gas industry to truly learn from each other. These are some of the necessary ingredients to move us towards our ambition to eliminate fatalities, permanent impairments and catastrophic process safety events. If you would like to join the conversations and to be part of the solutions please do reach out to connect.

Best wishes,

Tom

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