BSEE Launches Efforts to Reduce Offshore Risk

Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) Director Brian Salerno made two announcements during a press conference in Houston Tuesday at the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) - each aimed at reducing the risks associated with offshore oil and gas operations.

First, Director Salerno announced the launch of the SafeOCS program, an initiative aimed at collecting and analyzing “near miss” data. Second, he released BSEE’s first-ever Annual Report, which presents the agency’s analysis of offshore activities, trends, indicators, incidents and other key data points.

Salerno said BSEE is working to identify methods to learn more about the causes of all serious offshore incidents. BSEE’s SafeOCS, an Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) near-miss reporting system, was formally launched this week with the activation of the program’s reporting line, 1-844-738-9OCS, and an official website to be available next month.

“I strongly encourage participation in the system by the entire offshore community as a way to help improve the overall safety posture of the industry,” Salerno said. “Shared awareness of safety trends will better equip everyone to focus on the right things and thereby drive down the risk of serious incidents.”

SafeOCS is a voluntary and confidential system in which the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) will collect and analyze near-miss reports submitted by individual OCS workers, companies and others. The aggregated data will be shared with the general public through the BTS website, and used to identify safety trends and increase understanding of offshore risk.

The BSEE 2014 Annual Report summarizes oil and gas activities from the past years, presents comparisons to previous years and describes BSEE’s analysis of trends. The Annual Report also outlines current BSEE initiatives and the agency’s plans to reduce risk in the coming year.

“Part of managing risk is monitoring the trends we are seeing offshore, and gauging the effectiveness of our approach,” Salerno explained. “We are pleased to see that some of the most serious incidents offshore, including fatalities are decreasing. But our work is far from done. For example, the Annual Report observes an increase in loss of well control events. That’s troubling, given the potential for such incidents to have grave consequences.”