CHEMICAL ENGINEERING TRANSACTIONS VOL. 26, 2012 A publication of The Italian Association of Chemical Engineering Online at: www.aidic.it/cet Guest Editors: Valerio Cozzani, Eddy De Rademaeker Copyright © 2012, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l., ISBN 978-88-95608-17-4; ISSN 1974-9791 Deepwater Horizon: Lessons learned for the Norwegian Petroleum Industry with focus on Technical Aspects Stein Hauge*, Knut Øien SINTEF Technology and Society, NO-7465, Trondheim, Norway stein.hauge@sintef.no 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. 1. Introduction On April 20, 2010, an uncontrolled blowout of oil and gas from the Macondo well occurred on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, in the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana coast. The accident caused the loss of 11 lives and the resulting environmental oil spill has been estimated to almost 5 million barrels. As a response to the Deepwater Horizon accident, a number of investigations and studies have been carried out. The Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) Norway also initiated extensive work to learn from the accident, and as part of input to this work, SINTEF prepared a separate report which provided recommendations for the industry in order to reduce the likelihood of a similar accident to occur in the Norwegian petroleum activity (Tinmannsvik et al., 2011). A common conclusion from many of the Deepwater Horizon investigation reports is that the accident did not happen as a result of one crucial misstep or a single technical failure, but as a result of a series of events, decisions, misjudgements and omissions that reveal a systemic breakdown. Discussing all the aspects of what went wrong and why is however outside the scope of this paper. Rather we want to focus on some of the technical aspects related to the accident. Although it has been thoroughly concluded that organisational and managerial deficiencies were important precursors leading up to the accident, it should also be pointed out that technical failures and system weaknesses played an important part in the causal picture of the accident. The importance of technical causes is discussed on a more general basis by e.g. Kidam et al. (2010). 621