Meet AGRs Morten Haug Emilsen at International Well Control Conference 2026

Perhaps the broader lesson from both developments is that innovation does not necessarily require a large organisation. Small, highly specialised teams can develop genuinely new technology when they combine deep technical expertise with practical experience and the willingness to challenge established solutions. That mindset still shapes how I approach well control today.

3. You have worked on some of the oil and gas industry’s most significant blowouts, including Macondo oil spill and Aliso Canyon gas leak. What have these incidents taught you about effective well control and blowout contingency planning?

Macondo and Aliso Canyon are two examples, but we have seen the same thing in many other major well control incidents. When a blowout occurs and a dedicated Blowout Task Force is established, highly specialised well control expertise can make a significant contribution.

Even the largest oil and gas companies cannot necessarily maintain extensive in-house experience with major blowouts, advanced dynamic simulations and the evaluation of alternative well control and well kill methods. These are events that fortunately occur very rarely, so few organisations can maintain that level of specialist experience internally.

Macondo demonstrated the value of dynamic modelling particularly well. Our Olga-Well-Kill simulations were used extensively to reconstruct the behavior of the well and understand what had actually happened downhole. The modelling formed an important part of bp’s subsequent accident investigation and was used to evaluate the likely influx path, the development of the blowout and the response of the well and BOP.

For me, one of the key lessons from these incidents is the value of bringing specialist modelling capability into the response team immediately. During a major blowout, key well control decisions have to be made quickly and often with incomplete information. Being able to dynamically simulate the outcome, test different hypotheses against actual field data and evaluate alternative control methods gives the Blowout Task Force a much stronger technical basis for those decisions.

4. With experience from more than 95 well kills and nearly 2,000 blowout contingency plans and simulations, what in your opinion separates organisations that are truly prepared for a blowout from those that simply comply with requirements?

There are differences between operators in how far they go in understanding well control risk and preparing for a potential blowout. Some organisations base their preparedness primarily on meeting regulatory requirements, while others have developed internal requirements that go further. To me, that often reflects a stronger sense of ownership of the risk rather than simply compliance with it.

Why these differences exist is more difficult to answer. An organisation that has experienced a major well control incident will naturally have a very different appreciation of what such an event can involve, and that experience can have an influence on its approach to preparedness. But it is not as simple as that. We also work with smaller operators that have never experienced a major blowout but nevertheless take preparedness extremely seriously.

For me, the real distinction is whether an organisation has genuinely asked itself if our worst-case blowout happens tomorrow, are we actually ready to respond? That means going beyond having a blowout contingency plan on the shelf. The response strategies need to be technically verified, the feasibility of the well kill methods needs to be verified, the required equipment and resources need to be identified and accessible, and the organisation needs to understand the assumptions and limitations behind its plans.

Compliance is important, but true preparedness comes from understanding and owning the risk.

5. Where do you see field tested independent well control and blowout simulations creating the greatest value for operators when reducing risk and protecting asset integrity?

One of the main benefits of independent well control verification and blowout and well kill simulations is that they make the operator more aware of the actual risks involved.

The independence is important. Operators often have capable internal well control and engineering teams, but there is value in having the blowout contingency plan, assumptions and proposed well control methods reviewed by specialists who have not been involved in developing them. In many ways, it follows the same principle as an independent audit – independent verification provides a fresh technical perspective and can identify assumptions or limitations that may otherwise be overlooked.

The simulations allow us to quantify what can happen during a blowout, whether the planned well control methods will work and what equipment and capacities will actually be required. Sometimes the results confirm that the existing contingency plan is adequate, but in other cases we identify limitations that need to be addressed.

This process is important because it gives the operator a better understanding of the risk and encourages them to take ownership of their own preparedness. And this is much better done during the planning stage than during an actual well control event.

6. Which well control and blowout risks are still most commonly underestimated, and what practical steps can operators take to strengthen preparedness throughout the lifecycle of a well?

One risk that is often underestimated is the potential for a serious blowout from a normally pressured reservoir. There can be a perception that a well with relatively low reservoir pressure represents a limited well control risk. However, many of the blowouts we have worked on have actually flowed from normally pressured reservoirs.

Another area that I think is often underestimated is relief well planning for highly deviated and long horizontal wells. We sometimes see relief well planning approached in much the same way as for a deep vertical well, but these are very different situations. Well geometry can have a major impact on where an interception can realistically be made and therefore on the time and complexity involved in drilling the relief well.

These are things that should be evaluated during the blowout contingency planning. It is much easier to deal with limitations in a relief well or well kill strategy before you have a blowout than after one has occurred.