3 questions… on IOGP’s response to the Macondo blowout and oil spill

In each edition of Pulse, we will publish a short interview with a colleague or committee member.
This month’s interview is with Diana Khatun, IOGP’s Wells Expert Committee Manager. She is based at IOGP’s London office, and kindly agreed to this short interview on how IOGP responded to the Macondo blowout and oil spill. 

What initiatives took place after the Macondo blowout and oil spill?

IOGP created the “Global Industry Response Group (GIRG)”, to analyse the lessons from the Macondo blowout. It focussed on three core areas: prevention, intervention, and response; and proposed that three entities be created to address them.

Now, in light of the tenth anniversary of Macondo, IOGP has produced a that video shows how IOGP members have, in the months following the accident and continuing to the present day, collaborated to rebuild trust in our industry.

Why did the IOGP Wells Expert Committee feel this was important to address?

We wanted to show that the work is still ongoing.

IOGP realized that the 2010 event and other similar events should not happen again, and it was very important for the industry to capture the learnings from what had happened and prevent something like that from occurring again.

The Wells Expert Committee is comprised of a number of individuals from different operators, different service companies, that all come together and who share a passion for making the industry a better place. They have a common goal of making the industry a place where damaging well control incidents no longer occur.

We’ve learned from the events in 2010 and other well control events. People are now more aware of the well control risks and the impacts it can have on our companies, on our people, on our society, and the environment in which we operate.

Therefore, the Wells Expert Committee encourages everyone within IOGP to share well control incidents. It is important to the industry, with the idea that, through this, eventually we can get to a place where well control incidents are a thing of the past.

The Wells Expert Committee, as it has done for the last ten years, will continue to pursue our mission of preventing and mitigating high-impact well control events.

How has it been successful – has safety been improved?

The success of these initiatives can be seen in the continued collaboration within the industry and through the sharing of incidents and learnings. These are documented and shared publicly.

Sharing and learning from these incidents strengthens the industry’s ability to deal with any major incident.

I believe that the industry is safer because the GIRG initiatives transformed our industry’s culture and processes. These recommendations have significantly improved the industry’s ability to prevent major offshore incidents.