Chevron failed to meet own offshore training promises: Audit

OTTAWA – The company that has been exploring for oil at record depths off Canada’s Atlantic coast did not keep its promises to train workers to respond to an offshore oil spill, according to audit records obtained exclusively by Postmedia News.

Last month, Chevron Canada completed exploratory drilling at a well in the oil-rich Orphan Basin, roughly 430 kilometres northeast of St. John’s, N.L. At 2,600 metres below sea level, the so-called Lona O-55 well is the deepest ever drilled in Canadian waters.

The previous record was set by the Great Barasway F-66 well, another well drilled by Chevron in the Orphan Basin in 2006.

Before drilling those wells, Chevron filed an oil-spill response plan with regulators in which the company pledged to train workers in several areas, including safety, response operations and equipment.

But an audit conducted by the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board, the federal-provincial watchdog that regulates drilling off the province’s coast, found that Chevron failed to deliver the training described in the response plan.

The audit – completed in October 2006 on the Great Barasway project – was obtained by Postmedia News under the federal Access to Information Act.

"Having reviewed your e-mail of September 20, 2006, and, based on the information in the e-mail and its attachments, I conclude that the training provided to personnel identified in the (oil-spill response plan) submitted by Chevron in relation to the Orphan Basin Drilling Program does not conform to the training described in Section 10 of that plan," Ken Taylor, environmental compliance officer with the board, wrote in a letter to Chevron.

Under Chevron’s response plan, all onshore and offshore personnel who could potentially be involved in battling a spill – from senior managers to crew members on the drilling rig – are supposed to receive some kind of training.

Taylor noted, however, that rig management had only received a "general spill response orientation," rather than the specific training sessions identified by Chevron in its plan, including surveillance and monitoring, oil sampling, and seabird handling and observation. Moreover, the audit found that just one of two weather and ice observers had received the required training. In its response plan, Chevron warns that pack ice floating south from the Arctic could hamper its ability to clean up a spill and drill a relief well to plug a leak.

The company also pledged to provide "hands-on training" to crew members of any company-chartered ships in observing oil on water and handling cleanup booms, among other things. But the audit discovered the company hadn’t lived up to its promise to train crew members as soon as they are available "at the beginning of the drilling program or during their first shifts offshore while under charter to Chevron."

Following the audit, Chevron completed the required training, and no fines or penalties were imposed, board spokesman Sean Kelly said in an e-mail.

He noted that before Chevron commenced drilling the Lona O-55 well in May, the company was required to confirm that "all training had been completed." In May, the board announced a series of "special oversight" measures for the Lona well, including audits and inspections every three or four weeks, compared with the previous standard of every three or four months.

A Chevron spokesman said the Lona well was completed without any safety incidents.

"Our focus throughout was ensuring safe, incident-free operations and protection of the environment," said spokesman Leif Sollid, adding that results of the exploratory drilling are "confidential."

The Lona well was more than a kilometre deeper than BP’s Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, where a blowout this spring unleashed the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. In the wake of the Gulf spill, the Newfoundland government appointed an offshore drilling expert to review the province’s safety and environmental-protection practices.

There are currently three platforms – Hibernia, Terra Nova and White Rose – producing oil off Newfoundland’s coast at considerably shallower depths than the Lona well. In July, the board solicited bids for exploratory licences in the Flemish Pass basin, where drilling is expected to occur at depths of about 2,000 metres.