An article mentions the following about the BP oil rig disaster:
"A sorry catalogue of technical, safety and regulatory failures all contributed to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, according to an interim independent report commissioned by the US Department of the Interior and published today.
The oil spill began on 20 April when an uncontrolled release of oil and gas from an underwater well caused an explosion that engulfed the Deepwater Horizon rig, killing 11 crewmen on board. The leak continued until 15 July, releasing about 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf, the largest accidental marine oil spill in history.
The report highlights a number of failures that led to the accident. It says the well had not been properly sealed with cement and that this allowed oil and gas to escape.
The "pivotal moment" came when workers carried out several pressure tests to check the integrity of the well but ignored the signs that something was wrong, said Paul Bommer, a petroleum engineer at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of the panel of experts that produced the report.
The report says the panel has not yet had time to work out why the blowout preventer, a giant valve on the seafloor which should have stopped the flow of oil as a measure of last resort, failed to activate".
Always, technical as well as safety failures occur for an incident to happen. Just by implementing management systems does not mean you can prevent an incident. Today, there is also a lot of talk about behavior based safety management systems, but as I have mentioned earlier, I am not a fan of this. It needs constant 24X7 safety oriented behaviour by top management, be it budget allocation, decision making, manpower allocation, gauging technical competency to manage cost cutting etc to ensure process safety is managed well.
Read the full article in this link.
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