A lack of training, familiarity, and experience with the drill floor equipment and drillship layout could have contributed to the Dec. 2, 2017, accident that killed a floor hand aboard the Petrobras 10000 drillship working in the Gulf of Mexico’s Walker Ridge 469 area, the US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said in a Feb. 13 report of its investigation into the incident.
BSEE said the Transocean Offshore Deepwater Drilling Inc. floor hand, who was not identified, was part of a crew performing drill pipe picking up and racking back operations on the vessel’s auxiliary drill floor when he was crushed between the skate’s loading platform arm and an auxiliary stanchion post around 4:40 a.m. CST.
“The panel’s investigation and its findings underscore the importance of placing safety first in every job being undertaken on a facility—no matter how routine,” BSEE Director Scott A. Angell said in a memorandum accompanying the report.
The report also highlights the importance of following and enforcing safety rules on an offshore rig and the need for appropriate training, familiarity, and experience with a drillship’s equipment, Angell said. “This is particularly important when the crew is reporting to the first shift of their hitch,” he said.
“Finally, with the fatal incident occurring more than 10 hr into the crew’s shift, the report underscores the importance of not becoming complacent while performing a repetitive job,” Angell said.
Angell directed BSEE’s Office of Offshore Regulatory Programs to work with regional directors and appropriate staff to issue a safety bulletin regarding the investigation’s most significant findings and provide recommendations to prevent a similar incident from occurring. He also directed the US Department of the Interior agency’s Gulf of Mexico regional director to:
• Increase BSEE inspectors’ awareness of possible inadequacies of identification and understanding of restricted access and safe zones, and of hazards which could rise from limited clearance between skates and other equipment and other objects on a drill floor.
• Develop a work plan with milestone for conducting risk-based inspections of drill floor restricted areas and safe zones.
Angell requested that both work plans be submitted to himself and to the chief of the Safety and Incident Investigations Divisions within 30 days.
Nick Snow
NICK SNOW covered oil and gas in Washington for more than 30 years. He worked in several capacities for The Oil Daily and was founding editor of Petroleum Finance Week before joining OGJ as its Washington correspondent in September 2005 and becoming its full-time Washington editor in October 2007. He retired from OGJ in January 2020.
