The Worldwide Offshore Accident Databank (WOAD)

WOAD is a repository of information on accidents occurring in the offshore oil and gas industry. The initiative to start collecting this information began in the mid-1970s. Information on lessons learned serves as invaluable input to help industry understand and avoid accidents in the future. There are 2,288 fatalities currently recorded in WOAD among the recorded 6451 accidents. This is a sobering thought and the driver for continuing with this worthwhile collection, which is something that has become much more than "data".

The distribution of source information in WOAD is varied. Typically information from the North Sea and Gulf of Mexico is abundantly available; however other parts of the world do not report accident information as readily. This allows us to draw the conclusion that the significant number of recorded fatalities is an underestimate. The distribution of data from the North Sea, Gulf of Mexico and the rest of the world are shown in Figure 1 to illustrate the extent of this effect.

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