Drilling Risk Management in Offshore China: Insights and Lessons Learned from the Deepwater Horizon Incident

The Deepwater Horizon disaster is undoubtedly verified as the most severe and systematic failure within the oil and gas industry to date, leaving a lasting legacy with enormous human, economic and environmental consequences. In the wake of this tragedy, CNOOC, Sinopec and CNPC are triggered with joint efforts to upgrade safety rules for shallow and deep water drilling, so as to keep up with increasingly risky operations in an increasingly tough situation in China. Especially, there is a pressing need to rebuild integrated strategy and reshape the future of offshore play in South China Sea, the major and prospective deepwater area typically featuring in HPHT and lacking of matched drilling risk control technologies. Rigorous requirements are primarily analyzed with respect to present status of offshore drilling in China. All recorded oil spill incidents in GOM are statistically discussed to recognize controllable and uncontrollable reasons. Then, in view of the possible causes of the Deepwater Horizon accident, an integrated drilling risk management system was proposed with indepth analysis in terms of six rules. The primary and fundamental rule is to improve offshore drilling technology, including pressure control, wellbore profile design and adjustment, casing running, cementing, risk prediction and treatment, as well as related equipments like BOP, ROV and riser. The second is to further modify offshore drilling standards, specifications and regulations. The third is to strengthen supervision and management from both national and corporate structures. The fourth is to cultivate and intensify the safety culture within the whole drilling system. The fifth, also the most urgent, is to establish allied emergency response system for blowout, explosion and oil spill. The last is about recruiting, training and talent introduction. The main purpose of this paper is to establish a specific drilling risk management system appropriate for offshore China to guarantee the energy security in the post-Macondo offshore play.