Offshore Safety: Collection and Recording of Relevant Drilling Data in the Italian Offshore by Means of Virtual Black Boxes

The paper illustrates systems and procedures recently adopted in Italy for the collection and recording of relevant drilling data, in the light of the requirements of Directive 2013/30/EU, elaborated and enforced following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. Thanks to the increased environmental consciousness of institutions, industry and people, worldwide environmental policies more and more require a rigorous protection of the environment. The Directive 2013/30/EU on the safety of offshore oil and gas operations introduced strict requirements for the protection of both people and the environment, that are the targets which could be involved and seriously damaged by incidents occurring at offshore installations. Today, the Italian law requires Operators to set up an information and communication technology system that guarantees the integrity, availability and non-repudiation of drilling and drilling fluids parameters recorded in real time aboard drilling vessels and offshore platforms, while respecting the principles of confidentiality and responsibility of the data, under all conditions. Oil companies operating in the Italian offshore implemented hardware and software systems that can be described as “Virtual Black Boxes”. These are data management systems coupled to the Mud Logging Units of offshore drilling rigs, which allow the quasi-real time transmission of a subset of drilling parameters to a number of onshore data storage sites and their integral and safe recording on dedicated servers. The redundancy of information is ensured by managing multiple servers owned by the Operator and the mud logging Contractor. Normally, these servers are hosted at the Operators’ headquarters and at Contractors’ data storage centers. Data visualization is possible thanks to the use of special software, developed by Contractors and made available to Operators. Data acquisition, transmission and storage protocols are shared with the Italian competent Authority. These systems are already operative in the Italian offshore, even though studies are under way to enhance the intrinsic safety of the system and its possible implementation into a multi-criteria approach related to the overall safety performance of upstream operations. The aim of this novel tool is to grant the competent Authority a reliable access to drilling data for the due analysis in case of accident, also in the light of taking the necessary legal actions. Virtual Black Boxes are designed, implemented and managed in order to ensure data safety and data security, also to prevent manipulation of the records, in compliance with the requirements of Directive 2013/30/EU and its Italian transposition.