Rig Workers Raised Safety Fears Before Blast
7:23pm UK, Thursday July 22, 2010
Workers on the Deepwater Horizon rig voiced concerns about safety just weeks before it exploded and caused the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, it has emerged.
The explosion on the Deepwater Horizon killed 11 workers
In a survey commissioned by rig owner Transocean some staff raised worries about poor equipment reliability, which they believed was a result of drilling priorities taking precedence over maintenance.
The workers’ safety review was conducted by a division of Lloyd’s Register Group, which inspected the rig on March 16, holding focus groups and one-on-one interviews with at least 40 Transocean workers.
In an executive summary seen by Sky News Online, four areas were identified where strong structures were in place, including rig leadership, workforce influence on safety, trust between work teams, and provision of resources to support safe operations.
Nine separate areas were given assessments by workers, with the rig’s safety culture given averaged ratings between 2.5 and 3.5 out of a maximum of five.
A separate 112-page equipment assessment also commissioned by the company concluded many key components had not been fully inspected since 2000 even though guidelines stated it should be done every three to five years.
While BP has been under the harshest glare for its role in the disaster, which killed 11 workers, the US Justice Department has stated its criminal investigation will look at the role of the many companies involved.
Run it, break it, fix it. That’s how they work.
Worker on the Transocean Deepwater Horizon
BP was leasing the rig from Transocean, and 79 of the 126 people on the rig when it exploded on April 20 were Transocean employees.
While it described workers’ concerns about safety and fear of reprisals if objects were dropped from heights, it did state the rig was “relatively strong in many of the core aspects of safety management”.
Workers believed teamwork on the rig was effective but were mostly worried about the reaction of managers onshore to incidents.
Less than half of the workers interviewed stated they felt they could report actions leading to a potentially “risky” situation without any fear of reprisal.
“At nine years old, Deepwater Horizon has never been in dry dock,” one worker told investigators. “We can only work around so much.”
“Run it, break it, fix it,” another worker said. “That’s how they work.”
The equivalent of millions of barrels of oil have washed ashore on the US coast
Around 36% of workers felt there were too many steps in place to manage risks and 33% believed Transocean’s merging with another firm in 2007 negatively impacted on safety.
Investigators also stated “nearly everyone” among the workers they interviewed believed that Transocean’s system for tracking health and safety issues on the rig was “counter productive”.
Many workers entered fake data to try to circumvent the system. As a result, the company’s perception of safety on the rig was distorted, the report concluded.
Transocean’s equipment report may shed new light on why the blowout preventer failed to stop the surging well, one of the biggest remaining mysteries of the disaster.
Transocean spokesman Lou Colasuonno stated most of the 26 components found to be in poor condition were minor and all elements of the blowout preventer had been inspected within the required time frame by its manufacturer.
On the 33-page report about workers’ safety concerns, he stated the Deepwater Horizon had previously gone seven consecutive years without a single incident halting production or causing major environmental damage.
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Submited at Friday, July 23rd, 2010 at 12:00 am on Business by blum
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