Drilling Operations Monitoring in the Italian Offshore by means of Virtual “Black Boxes”

The study analyzes the systems for the monitoring of drilling activities in the Italian offshore, also in light of the requirements contained in the transposition of the Directive 2013/30/EU, enforced following the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico (2010). Today, the Italian law requires Operators to set up an information technology system that guarantees the integrity, availability and non-repudiation of the technical parameters of drilling and drilling fluid, while respecting the principles of confidentiality and responsibility of the data, under all conditions. In Italy, Virtual “Black Boxes” have been implemented, i.e., data management systems coupled to the Mud Logging Units of offshore rigs, which allow the quasi-real time transmission of a subset of drilling parameters, and their integral and safe storage on at least two separate servers hosted at the Operators’ facilities. These systems