Lloyd's Register Risk Model Wins EIC Award

Lloyd’s Register’s was awarded the EIC Supply Chain Excellence Award 2013, at the annual Energy Industries Council (EIC) award summit, held at The Natural History Museum in London, U.K., on October 10.

The EIC award recognizes companies in the energy industry that have demonstrated superiority within the supply chain, and there is only one winner every year. The award was presented to Lloyd’s Register for its Blow-Out Preventer (BOP) Risk Model program.

Lloyd’s Register’s BOP Risk Model allows owners and operators to model the risk of their BOP (a critically important component in any hydrocarbon drilling operation) against component failure, helping to determine whether to pull the BOP to the surface for inspection and repair or not. With results received and modeled in Lloyd’s Register’s program, risk and non-productive time is significantly reduced, both of which can prove costly to the industry and community at large. It is a key technical and innovative first step towards a risk-based and transparent decision-making tool for safer drilling, as well as immediate and consistent communication to all stakeholders in the event of a subsea BOP equipment failure.

Deep water drilling once again puts the oil industry at a cutting edge. A subsea BOP is a system which is highly regulated and among one of the few pieces of equipment that combines multiple functions such as drilling and operations control, a tool for preventing risk and supporting emergency response procedures. When operational, it is not visible. These factors mean that simple component failures can cause drilling operators to be exposed to severe risk – the BOP is often the final line of defense for protecting life and the environment. So there is high demand for a transparent and well-structured risk assessment approach that helps owners and operators to monitor the BOP's safety performance.

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