week 4: safety culture

The recent mine accidents that have made the national news have brought mine safety into the current media discussion. In a more general sense, they will likely create more awareness about industrial safety issues. In a more specific sense, it reminds me of the safety issues that are faced in the oil and gas industry. The long and short of it all is that safety is about money and the industry has decided that the cost of being safe is more profitable than the alternative. The overall response in the last 15 years has been a strong push for a comprehensive safety culture from the biggest players in the industry.

Working in the oilfield is an inherently risky operation. In short, there are lots of moving things, combustible things, pressurized things, some radioactive things, and it can be very noisy. In the United States the oilfield used to have the perception of being a bit of a cowboy industry and much of that perception was deserved. That is gradually changing as technology and safety become increasingly important, but there's still plenty of the "git 'er done" spirit to be found.

At a corporate level, the shift towards an increased focus on safety seems to have started in earnest about 15 years ago. If you wanted to try to single out a particular incident as a watershed event for the industry, it would probably be the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. It brought safety into focus by highlighting the need for corporate responsibility all the way down to the local operations level. If a company allows a known drunk to operate a vessel and has never intervened to stop the drinking or discipline the employee, then the company is just as culpable. Plus, corporations have deeper pockets than individuals. It's no different than if Schlumberger allowed someone who was known to be drunk to drive a commercial tractor-trailer vehicle. By informing employees of the consequences of their responsibilities and performing random drug tests, the company is doing what it can reasonably be expected to do to make sure it is not being negligent. Beyond that, individual accountability still matters but individuals decide what matters based on what they see from management.

There is much more to the safety issue than strict legal liability. That is certainly a cost that companies take care to avoid by training their employees and performing audits and making sure the rules are being followed. However, it's much more subtle than a matter of strict legal costs. Would you want to work for a company that you knew was not taking all reasonable measures to ensure your safety? Probably not, especially if you could go get the same job somewhere else for an employer that did care about safety. For the unsafe company, it's very expensive to deal with employee turnover and retrain new hires and bring them up to speed. Now imagine if you lose qualified, highly skilled people from all levels of the company. It becomes an ongoing personnel problem at that point and begins to affect business.

Now, the legal cost is certainly the biggest factor. It costs too much money to be unsafe given the nature of civil trials and punitive damages. It's especially apparent that companies in this industry have received that message. The general rule is that the larger and more public the company, the stronger the safety culture is. Schlumberger has developed a very strong safety culture partly due to its size and potential liability, but also because it understands that safety goes hand in hand with service quality. And as a service company, our reputation for high service quality is crucial to making money. Our larger clients that I have interacted with definitely have stronger safety policies and better enforcement of them than the independents. That is something that is quite apparent in the field. However, the Schlumberger standard does not change for the client. We always maintain our standards unless we're actually working for a client that has a stricter policy. In that case, the stricter policy is followed, but such instances are fairly rare.

Additionally, for a long time, and even today, the public image of the oil and gas industry has not been well managed by the industry. For the most part, industry leaders have let others define and engage in a rather one-sided discussion. (This is largely a separate topic from safety, but it is related. I'll probably write on this at some point.) By aggressively engaging the safety issue, the industry has slowly begun to define the public discussion on its own terms. This is important for an industry where winning at the public relations game to gain popular and political appeal is an important part of business.

The point has been reached where all the biggest companies have largely similar policies. Perhaps Schlumberger's are stricter in many cases, but most operators are willing to accommodate those for what I feel is a corresponding increase in service quality. Yes, it is true that there are small independents that wouldn't know safety from the hole in the ground they're trying to drill, but all the big operators and service providers are mostly on the same page. The strength of a company's safety culture really boils down to, not what the rules say, but how the rules are followed and enforced. That is a matter of local responsibility, but developing a sincere interest in safety comes from much higher up. The local level of operations picks up indicators of upper management's earnestness based on audits and reviews and whether they visit districts and ask the right questions about safety. A local operation also knows and remembers when things are swept under the rug and who is ignoring what. In those terms, my experience is that Schlumberger has done very well. I've met our district manager's boss as well as the safety person at the same level. I've met the President of US Land. They engaged me about safety and most other people they met at the district.

For Schlumberger the signs point to a strong management committeemen to safety. The local level impact is noticeable. I have seen operations shut down to address the most serious of incidents. I have seen supervisors decide not to perform operations they decided were unsafe and I have seen management back those decisions. We have quarterly safety stand downs, monthly reviews, weekly meetings, daily briefings, pre-trip convoy meetings, pre-job safety meetings, post-job meetings, bulletins, and more papers and risk analysis forms and boxes to check than you can shake a stick at. For me, I interpret all the information directed at in a very simple way. My number one goal when I go into the field is to make sure that my crew and I go home safe at the end of the day. Sometimes the safety barrage feels like overkill, but I'd rather it be that than get someone I know killed.