He also praised the industry for taking technology innovation to the next level, and urged continued efforts at personnel development. “We must work to develop our leaders. This is not the same industry we had in the ‘70s, ‘80s or ‘90s. A new generation of employees will take the industry to a new level, one that maybe we haven’t even though of yet.”
His strongest emphasis continued to be the importance of safety. “Safety is the most important decision we make as individuals,” he said. “If we can’t do it safely, we shouldn’t do it at all.” Industry also must take a more proactive stance on environmental stewardship because “we owe it to ourselves, to our communities, to our companies and to our children,” he urged.
Conference chairman: It’s crunch time
Rodney Eads, Pride International executive vice president and chief operating officer and 2008 IADC/SPE Drilling Conference chairman, reiterated Mr Lindsay’s emphasis on HSE. Referring to IADC safety statistics, he pointed to the industry’s dramatic improvements in LTI numbers since 1968. That rate has steadily trended downwards ever since, yet has stopped improving since 2003. Over the past 4-5 years, improvement has slackened and safety performance is running flat.
“We’re facing a perfect storm now,” with significant numbers of newbuilds and inexperienced personnel, he said. “We’ve been talking about it for a couple of years, but now it’s crunch time. We have very big challenges ahead. We must provide the right leadership that will not put pressure on people to cut corners. When we say that safety is no.1, we must mean it.”
