Deepwater Horizon: Lessons learned for the Norwegian Petroleum Industry with focus on Technical Aspects

The Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico, leading to the largest oil spill in the US history
and the death of 11 men, has been thoroughly investigated to avoid a similar catastrophe in the future.
In this paper we make a review of the accident including a brief overview of the causes, discuss the
relevance of the accident for the Norwegian Petroleum Industry and describe how the Norwegian
Petroleum Industry has made an effort to learn from the accident. The conclusion is that the Norwegian
Petroleum Industry generally faces the same challenges and the same hazards as in the Gulf of
Mexico, and we therefore need to maximise the lessons learned from the Deepwater Horizon accident
in order to avoid similar accidents in the Norwegian petroleum activity. However, using two technical
systems as examples – kick detection and the blowout preventer – we also show that it is not
necessarily straightforward to implement recommendations made for the Gulf of Mexico on the
Norwegian Continental Shelf. Additional studies, research and adaptation are in some cases needed.