Safety in Drilling Offshore Operations: A Narrative Literature Review

Abstract

This paper sought to collect and analyze evidence reported in studies that address the safety dimension in drilling offshore operations. A bibliographic search was made at different databases and following the exclusion of the duplicates and applying the inclusion/exclusion criteria 19 papers were reviewed by the authors. This literature review showed that the documents still address the issue of security in drilling offshore operations from a behavioral perspective with little regard to the human and organizational factors of industrial security. Even studies that used a qualitative or mixed approach based on interviews and focus groups as data collection procedures, which are interesting strategies, do not reach the complexity of real work situations. To overcome this gap is therefore suggested to develop and disseminate researches in drilling offshore operations that adopt frameworks that access actual work situations and allow to address the security beyond the focus on individual behavior.