REM Publishes Paper on Montara Blowout

R.E.M. Risk Consultants has updated our 2013 paper on the Macondo blowout (B.P. oil spill) to include a study on the Montana blowout in the Timor Sea off the coast of Australia. This peer reviewed paper, titled ‘Human Error Analysis of the Montara Well Blowout’ was published in Process Safety Progress (https://doi.org/10.1002/prs.12182).

The Montara wellhead blowout resulted the total loss of the West Atlas drilling rig and caused massive coastal and marine ecological damage in Australia, East Timor, and West Timor, Indonesia. The incident preceded the 2010 Macondo Deepwater Horizon blowout and shared many parallels. The Montara incident stemmed from a series of human errors including, but not limited to, miscalculations, procedural errors, hasty decision making, and failure to follow the American Petroleum Institute Recommended Practice 75 on drilling mud circulation. In both papers, an error classification system is applied to organize errors and critical events into eight categories related to human error.

Open access copies of both papers can be downloaded here:

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