SafeOCS Industry Safety Data: The Value Proposition for the Oil & Gas Industry

PresentationThis paper summarizes efforts by the U.S. Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) to develop and manage an industry-wide safety data framework under an agreement with the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE). The Industry Safety Data (ISD) program provides a trusted, proactive means for the oil and gas industry to voluntarily and securely report safety information to identify early warnings of safety problems by uncovering hidden at-risk conditions not previously exposed from analysis of reportable accidents and incidents. Besides agency-reportable incidents, this program captures near miss and other significant safety event information that is maintained by individual companies as part of their internal safety programs. Phase I of this program was completed in June 2019, and plans are progressing to expand industry participation. Companies have long realized the benefits of collecting and analyzing data around safety and environmental incidents to identify risk, then develop systems and processes to prevent recurrence. These activities have been supported and supplemented by industry associations that collect and share event information and develop recommended practices to aid in performance improvement. In high-reliability industries, such as aviation and nuclear, it is common practice to report and share events among companies and regulators to identify hidden trends and create or update existing recommended practices or regulations. The challenge for the oil and gas industry operating within the U.S. Gulf of Mexico Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) was that, while industry associations and the regulator were collecting data on significant incidents, lesser safety events or observed unsafe conditions/behaviors are not required to be reported and therefore may go unnoticed as a trend until a major event occurs. This represented an opportunity for industry, BSEE, and BTS to collaborate on a means of gathering incident data that would allow for analysis and identification of trends or events of significance enabling appropriate interventions to prevent major incidents. The value proposition of this effort is development of a comprehensive safety data repository that facilitates the continual improvement in safety and environmental performance from the implementation of learnings shared from trends or lesser incidents and events occurring within industry