In this Insurance Institute of London (IIL) lecture on blowout prevention, Colin Stuart will talk about human factor causes and how technology and better barrier validation are helping to reduce risks. Colin will cover blowout risks across the lifecycle, including already abandoned wells.

The blowout insurance market works when blowouts are a rare event. The market would be even better if blowout risk will reduce over time. There are factors emerging to reduce risk but there are others that arguably increase the risk over time, and possibly very significantly. Human factor causes can be reduced but are stubbornly resistant to new technology solutions. Better technology can improve the basic integrity of wells, signal recognition and well shut-in response, and improved process safety can support the critical decisions that are required in difficult situations to avoid a blowout. However, technology gets great industry support if it reduces time and cost but not necessarily if it only reduces risk, again a human factor issue. Industry arguably needs encouragement from Underwriters to value risk reduction cost. LWC risk grows with time in production wells, typically during Well Interventions, and increasingly will happen in already abandoned/long term suspended wells. Loss of human capitol in recent years will have a definite impact on blowout frequency in years to come so proper evaluation of risk and risk reduction methods are crucial to industry sustainability.

By the end of this lecture members will have gained an insight into:

• Key human factor causes of blowouts
• How technology can reduce blowout risk to some extent
• How other factors will increase blowout risk over time
• What impact underwriters can have on blowout frequency

Chair:
Richard Dare, Energy Underwriter, Munich Re