Drilling consortia-new ways of organising exploration drilling in the oil and gas industry and the consequences for safety

Drilling for oil and gas is a high risk activity. This has recently been illustrated by the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which caused the deaths of 11 people as well as the worst environmental disaster ever to occur in the Gulf of Mexico. Traditionally, the exploration drilling activities in the oil and gas industry have been carried out by a single operator and a drilling contractor. Recently, a new model for organizing exploration drilling has emerged, especially on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. Smaller oil companies are now joining forces by creating a temporary organisation called drilling consortia. While the overall HSE responsibility is held by the operators, this is an operating model which relies heavily on outsourcing. In this way, the drilling activities are becoming more and more organized as networks than traditional hierarchical organization models. This is an organization form which is rarely addressed in the literature on safety management, which usually presupposes that risky activities can be governed within the boundaries of single organizations. This paper presents the preliminary results of a study of the safety consequences for this way of organising exploration drilling. One possible challenge is found in an increased need for coordination when such a large number of separate companies are to cooperate in high risk activities. On the positive side, and somewhat counterintuitive, we found that the new model can actually lead to greater continuity in the execution of many HSE-related activities.