The BP oil spill was the nation’s worst offshore drilling disaster, yet it hardly was a unique event. In fact, the number of mishaps, including an alarming near-miss that could have resulted in a disaster comparable to the Gulf of Mexico spill, have been on the rise around the world.
The Wall Street Journal examined the recent records of the U.S., Britain, Norway and Australia, all of which have significant offshore oil industries, and determined that — after years of improvement — safety has slipped lately.
In the U.S. portion of the Gulf of Mexico in 2009, for instance, there were 28 incidents in which there were significant releases of natural gas or oil, or in which workers lost control of the well. That marked the third consecutive year of increases. In Australia, the number of incidents per man-hour of work has more than doubled since 2005.
An incident off the coast of Norway cited by the Journal would have needed only an errant spark to turn a gas leak into a conflagration that would have rivaled the catastrophic scale of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which killed 11 oil rig workers in the Gulf of Mexico in April.
The spike has experts searching for explanations.
“Why does the safety performance of the offshore industry seem to be deteriorating?” asked Jane Cutler, Australia’s chief offshore regulator and a former oil industry executive. “People can forget to be afraid.”
The trend comes against a backdrop of increased deep-water drilling, as oil companies strive to keep up with rising demand and falling production from shallower, easier-to-drill wells.
Still, the industry’s faith in its ability to safely develop offshore oil and gas is largely unshaken, and it points to a long track record of successful drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Erik Milito, a senior official at the American Petroleum Institute, called the BP spill “an isolated incident.”
