The Australian industry response to Montara and Macondo

Abstract

Two major offshore accident events in the last two years have rightly focused the world’s attention on the safety and environmental performance and the oil spill response capacity of the offshore oil and gas industry. One of those incidents occurred right here in Australia. Ours is a capital intensive, high risk, high technology industry and we operate in tough environments. If things go wrong the consequences can be catastrophic. It is imperative, therefore, that we operate as a high reliability industry.

This paper will look at what the Australian oil and gas industry has done since Montara and Macondo to ensure that process safety, integrity and risk control are central to our business culture and way of operating. There are hard lessons, and understanding and applying these lessons is the industry’s top priority. We have, and will continue to, engage with our international colleagues to maximise our capacity to learn and improve.

This paper also highlights the fact that industry can never take the view that we have reached ‘best practice’—we must continuously review and update our practices, and this approach reflects the dynamic, constantly changing environment in which we operate.