Transocean Has Great Safety Year, Except For Those 11 Dead Workers

by Stuart Shapiro

Transocean, the company that owned the Deepwater oil rig that exploded in April of last year, reported on its safety accomplishments for the past year.

Transocean said it “recorded the best year in safety performance in our Company’s history,” despite the blowout on its Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that killed 11 workers and triggered the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The company’s proxy statement said that “notwithstanding the tragic loss of life in the Gulf of Mexico, we achieved an exemplary statistical safety record as measured by our total recordable incident rate . . . and total potential severity rate.”

In statistics classes one of the first things you teach is picking the right thing to measure.  A measure of safety that returns a positive result after 11 workers die in an explosion would get you a failing grade.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.