Turning Incidents into Insights: How Kosmos Energy is Reducing Major Accident Risks Through ITIP

At Kosmos Energy, we believe every incident — no matter how small — carries with it an opportunity to learn, adapt, and strengthen our defenses against Major Accident Risks (MAR). That belief is the driving force behind our Incidents to Insights Platform (ITIP), a cornerstone of our safety strategy that is transforming how we capture, share, and act on high-value lessons across organizational boundaries.

The Center for Offshore Safety (COS) recently honored Kosmos Energy with its 2025 Safety Leadership Award at the 13th Annual COS Forum, held September 17 in Houston. Kosmos’ winning initiative demonstrates excellence and creates a framework for continuous safety improvement. The COS recognized Kosmos’ innovative learning process that strengthens the safety culture of the company’s own operations and beyond.

The Importance of Sharing Incidents

In 2024, a contracted vessel experienced a spontaneous rupture of a nitrogen cylinder. Although the event was contained at the time, it carried some serious safety implications. Lee Thomas used this incident in a COS Awards submission to showcase our how our ITIP learning platform is used to efficiently share learnings with partners and industry. 

ITIP is fully integrated into the Kosmos HSE Management System, ensuring that learnings from significant safety incidents are documented and shared in a way that is:

• Repeatable and consistent: A standardized format allows learnings to be easily understood across different teams, assets, and companies.
• Rich and comprehensive: Each review goes beyond “what happened” to also address “why it happened,” “what was learned,” and the key questions others should ask in their own operations.
• Inclusive and cross-functional: A quarterly forum led by Gisèle Gros-Dubois brings together perspectives from technicians on the front line, engineers, and senior management, ensuring that a diverse range of inputs inform the lessons learned.

The goal is clear: to create the richest possible understanding of events and make those learnings actionable for the broadest possible audience.

Turning Learnings into Action

The ITIP process doesn’t just create learnings, it drives improvements through sharing:

• Prevention of recurrence inside Kosmos: For example, the nitrogen cylinder event led to updated inspection and storage practices across our operations.
• High-impact external sharing: ITIP learnings are shared with over 40 organizations and regulators, extending the value far beyond Kosmos. Since we shared the nitrogen cylinder event we have had feedback from several offshore companies saying they have improved their own handling, inspection and storage practices.
• Application in critical moments: Another recent example saw ITIP insights applied prior to a partner’s high-risk turnaround activity. In tandem with the partner’s own safety system, this effort contributed to a successful zero incident turnaround.

By sharing ITIP learnings across companies, regulators, and other industry bodies, Kosmos is ensuring that the most significant learnings reach the places where they can have the most impact.

Looking Ahead

The ITIP journey is ongoing. We continue to enhance functionality in the ITIP platform, refine the structure of our reviews, search out opportunities for wider collaboration, and share broadly with partners and industry peers. 

At Kosmos Energy, we are committed to turning incidents into actionable insights — protecting people, assets, and the environment by addressing the risks that matter most.