Applying the AcciMap Methodology to Investigate a Major Accident in Offshore Drilling: A Systematic Risk Management Framework for Oil and Gas Industry

Abstract

Abstract The investigation of accidents in different complex technological and high-risk industries indicates inadequate management systems and more specifically, ineffective communication as a major contributing cause of those accidents. In the specific case of the BP Deepwater Horizon (DWH) blowout, as the 2011 Chief Counsel's Report of the National Commissions noted, “what the investigation makes clear, above all else, is that management failures, not mechanical failings, were the ultimate source of the disaster.” This paper adopts the powerful AcciMap methodology, which was originally proposed by Professor Jens Rasmussen in 1997 and used for the analysis of accidents in industries such as transportation, for the risk management of offshore drilling accidents by incorporating associated socio-technical factors into an integrated framework. This graphical representation provides a big-picture to illustrate the context in which an accident occurred as well as the interactions between different levels of a socio-technical system that resulted in that event. In general, analysis of past accidents within the stated framework can define the patterns of hazards within an industrial sector. Such analysis can lead to definition of preconditions for safe operations, which is a main focus of proactive risk management systems. As a case study in this paper, the AcciMap methodology has been applied to the BP DWH accident in order to analyze the main contributing causes of that major system failure and the interactions of key involved decision-makers and stakeholders, who were involved in that disaster. The analysis of our developed AcciMap framework depicts that aside from influencing external components, organizational factors, among internal elements, were the root contributing causes of the BP DWH blowout. It is noteworthy that investigating previous accidents in oil and gas drilling shows that organizational factors were the root causes of accumulated errors and questionable decisions made by personnel or management. Such statement is generalizable to accidents in the whole oil and gas industry as well as other safety-critical systems such as transportation sector, healthcare industry and nuclear power plants. Our review of the literature indicates that few studies have applied a robust risk management method to the scope of interactions outside the boundary of an organization, with even more limited applications to the oil and gas industry. It is also noteworthy that although the AcciMap framework has been applied to the BP DWH case study, it is a systematic methodology that can be generalized and applied to other major mishaps in the oil and gas industry, both in upstream and downstream.