Complacency and competency issues are among the key factors stopping the oil and gas industry from making a step change in safety, a panel of sector representatives has concluded.
Speakers from across the industry, including a leading Macondo disaster investigator, spoke to Energy Voice last night ahead of a conference discussing human risks in health and safety management across the industry.
The SPE event titled Another Perspective on Risk: The Next Tipping Point, taking place at the AECC today, is the first ever conference dedicated to the impact of human risk within the oil and gas industry, stemming from a debate initiated on the society’s LinkedIn page.
The panelists agreed that a “culture of fear” was the key contributor to the redundancy of safety failings in the industry across the board.
“We’ve had a number of similar incidents and actually, whilst we have as an industry, internationally, thought that we’ve learnt lessons, what we haven’t been able to do is to make them stick,” said Susan Mackenzie, head of HSE Division Hazardous Installation Directorate at the HSE.
Ms Mackenzie pointed out that the industry had a tendency to become complacent following a major safety threat, pushed for time and performance goals.
Denial of potential hazards from unsafe procedures, combined with the current decline in the operational productivity in the UKCS pushing organisations to cut corners created a “very dangerous cocktail”, she added.
But RMT Union regional organiser Jake Molloy stressed the toxic culture derived from the top of an organisation.
“The workforce, certainly in the UK, aren’t complacent – they are determined to make a difference,” he said.
“It’s the management level where the problem lies.
“I don’t think there is any question about the culture of the senior management – they want their operations to go efficiently and safely; and the people on the bottom want the job to go efficiently and safely, because they want to go home.
“That middle mix is where it’s at, and we need to address this “just culture” approach, so there’s no deterrent to them taking on board and accepting challenge and acting on it.”
Watch our interview with the speakers below
Cost cutting measures and the fear of disappointing a client drive the leading management to send mixed messages to their staff, claimed Mark Griffon, member of the US Chemical Safety Investigation Board.
Mr Griffon said: “Sometimes we have corporate executives sending two different messages: they are sending a message of doing the right thing, safety first, but then to their middle manager they are saying: ‘We’re going to evaluate you on this set of performance standards.’
“So the last thing they [the middle management] want to do is be saddled with a lot of maintenance, especially if it’s not going to be a quick return on investment.”
The panel also concluded that the metrics applied by the industry to measure its performance need to change, if it is to step up its safety culture.
David Pritchard, co-chair of the Presidential Technical Commission for the Deepwater Horizon Safety Group said: “The industry’s own metrics show that if you take those two, three hours to manage those risks, even the smallest ones, you can actually save money – not to mention lives, time, environment.
“So I think one of the first places our industry needs to start is to look at how we’re measuring things to begin with as the “get it done faster and quicker” [culture] is simply not a good metric.
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