Deepwater Horizon: Lessons learned for the Norwegian Petroleum Industry with focus on Technical Aspects

The Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico, leading to the largest oil spill in the US history and the death of 11 men, has been thoroughly investigated to avoid a similar catastrophe in the future. In this paper we make a review of the accident including a brief overview of the causes, discuss the relevance of the accident for the Norwegian Petroleum Industry and describe how the Norwegian Petroleum Industry has made an effort to learn from the accident. The conclusion is that the Norwegian Petroleum Industry generally faces the same challenges and the same hazards as in the Gulf of Mexico, and we therefore need to maximise the lessons learned from the Deepwater Horizon accident in order to avoid similar accidents in the Norwegian petroleum activity. However, using two technical systems as examples – kick detection and the blowout preventer – we also show that it is not necessarily straightforward to implement recommendations made for the Gulf of Mexico on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. Additional studies, research and adaptation are in some cases needed.