PSA: Important Deepwater Horizon Investigation Completed

A lot of work has been put into discovering the causes of, and learning lessons from, the blowout and fire on Deepwater Horizon/Macondo in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

Earlier this year, the US federal agency, the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), completed its comprehensive investigation of the disaster. The CSB then published the last two of a total of four investigative reports on the accident.

Relevance for the Norwegian Continental Shelf?

The PSA has reviewed the results and recommendations of the CSB's reports and assessed them vis-à-vis the situation on the NCS.

The review of the CSB's latest reports has not identified any findings/results that have not already been addressed in the PSA's previous and ongoing work. The topics and the findings addressed by the CSB are however still highly relevant – especially in the light of the challenges which the industry faces in terms of efficiency and cost-cutting.

Four reports

The CSB's investigation is summarized in four reports on the following topics:

• The incident itself and the chain of events
• Technical findings relating to the blowout preventer (BOP)
• Human factors
• The safety regulatory regime during and after the accident and recommendations

The CSB reports can be downloaded here.

The PSA's follow-up of Deepwater Horizon

Extensive work was undertaken in Norway after the Deepwater Horizon accident. Shortly after the incident, the PSA set up a dedicated project group and between 2010 and 2013 the authority prepared a number of reports and recommendations for measures aimed at the industry. The work on following up the lessons learned and newly acquired knowledge after the incident in 2010 is still ongoing, involving activities and processes within various specialist sections of the PSA.

Find out more about our follow-up of the Deepwater Horizon accident here