Regulator Flags Second Potentially Fatal Dropped Object On Hibernia Platform
Canada's offshore energy regulator is monitoring another potentially fatal safety incident on the Hibernia platform after a worker was injured by falling casing during drilling operations, the second high-potential event at the facility in just over two months. The Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Energy Regulator said the incident occurred on 18 July while a pipe deck crew was preparing nine and five-eighths inch casing for transfer to the drilling rig.
Two casing joints, each weighing about 2,100 pounds, separated from a gantry crane's magnetic lifting system and fell approximately two metres onto the pipe deck below. One of the joints struck a worker's lower leg, and the worker was transported onshore for further medical evaluation. The regulator said the incident had the potential to be fatal based on the industry's dropped objects prevention scheme calculator, the standard tool used to convert mass and fall height into a severity classification independent of the outcome that actually occurred.
That classification is the substance of the concern. Dropped object incidents are assessed on what could have happened rather than what did, precisely because the difference between a bruised leg and a fatality in an event of this kind is a matter of centimetres. Two joints of casing falling together from a lifting system that was holding them magnetically represents a failure of a control that offshore drilling operations rely on continuously, and the regulator noted that it follows another potential fatality incident reported on the same platform on 12 May, whose follow-up it is still monitoring.
Following the July incident, operations in the affected area were suspended while the gantry crane was removed from service for inspection. The crane manufacturer examined the equipment, found no deficiencies and cleared it to return to service. Hibernia Management and Development Company has initiated a root-cause investigation which the regulator is monitoring. A finding of no equipment defect tends to push the inquiry towards procedure, surface condition of the load, and the way the lift was planned and supervised.
The Hibernia platform sits offshore Newfoundland and Labrador and is operated by Hibernia Management and Development Company, whose shareholders are led by ExxonMobil Canada with an interest of 33.125 percent, followed by Chevron, Suncor, Canada Hibernia Holding Corporation, Murphy Oil and Equinor Canada. ExxonMobil provides management and operational support services to the operating company. Two high-potential events in ten weeks on a single installation is the kind of pattern regulators treat as a signal about systems rather than as coincidence.
