Well Control Institute prioritizes safety, regulation
The Well Control Institute (WCI) has been hard at work establishing priorities and near-term goals, said Steve Kropla, Vice President of IADC’s Offshore Division. In this video from the 2015 IADC Well Control Conference of the Americas in Galveston, Texas, on 25 August, Mr Kropla speaks with DC about the latest developments with WCI.
The relatively new WCI Board has begun the process of cataloguing what the industry is doing to improve well control performance globally, to identify any gaps that exist and make recommendation to industry groups and/or regulatory agencies to continue making improvement to well control safety.
In the video, Mr. Kropla specifically discusses how the relatively new Board has identified WCI’s list of prioritized well control topics:
- Competency
- Safety management
- BOP reliablity systems
- Automatic kick detection
To best align their priorities, they’ve also created an “inventory of industry initiatives,” which is a list of industry standards from groups like ISO, API, or other internal company programs.
The Board is also initiated a study on the current landscape of well control training systems. The WCI has requested information on the well control training systems from the International Well Control Forums and IADC’s WellSharp. Specifically, the board wants a gap-analysis of whether these well control safety systems comply with IOGP 476, document that provides recommendations for enhancements to well control training, examination and certification.
The final objective with this study potentially could be an official endorsement of one or both of the well control training systems by the WCI Board.
The WCI also has expressed their concern with a recent proposed BSEE well control rule and urge that agency act cautiously and collaboratively to avoid any negative effect of such an onerous regulation.
