Deloitte & Touche has teamed with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, to bring ‘space-age’ risk management to the oil and gas industry. Deloitte principle David Traylor explained, ‘Deep-water drilling, subsea production and pipeline operations all face the same kind of ‘black swan’ events that threaten space exploration. The alliance with NASA combines the agency’s 50-plus years of experience of preventing and recovering from catastrophic accidents with Deloitte’s advanced-risk strategies. Proactively identifying and mitigating low-probability, high-impact events can save lives, money, reputation and environmental disruption.’
Deloitte and NASA are to offer a range of risk-science services such as risk modeling and simulation including Bayesian networks and agent-based modeling that reduce uncertainties in engineering and operations. Other techniques include precursor analysis, event trending and artificial-intelligence tools applied to remote decision-support systems.
The offering also addresses risk KPI monitoring to assess the effectiveness of employees and contractors. NASA regularly measures its own safety culture using assessment reviews to identify warning signs of ‘cultural deterioration’ that might lead to poor decisions. NASA sees the partnership as expanding beyond the oil and gas industry, advancing its mission to commercialize its scientific capabilities. The service offering will emanate from Deloitte’s Center for energy solutions. More from Deloitte.
This article originally appeared in Oil IT Journal 2013 Issue # 7.
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