Remembering Piper Alpha

[tamada]

The following from LinkedIn.

"Ask someone in 2022 to name the world's worst offshore disaster and they will probably say Deepwater Horizon. But something much more devastating happened 34 years ago today that Changed Both Aberdeen in Scotland and the offshore Industry.

There's a simple wreck buoy sitting a couple of hundred meters off the corner of Piper Bravo and that is all that remains of Piper Alpha. It floats silently as a memorial to the 167 men who died that night. Many of whose bodies still lie entombed in the tangled wreckage beneath the North Sea.

Most major disasters don't result from a single 'big' thing, they escalate along a chain of small ones - any of which has the possibility to change, or stop the outcome altogether. But that non-critical pump trip just before 10PM on July 6th 1988 set in motion a truly awful set of events where every single thing conspired to create a situation which can only be described as Hell on Earth. When the Tartan riser ruptured some 30 mins later, there was no way back. The fire was consuming over half a tonne of natural gas per second - equivalent to the entire domestic consumption of the UK - and melting the 20,000 tonne platform from the inside out.

Although no criminal charges were ever brought; in the aftermath of the disaster the UK offshore industry accepted every one of the 106 recommendations put forward by the Cullen Inquiry. Recommendations that completely reshaped the industry, and changed it into a model widely copied around the world. If these lessons had been learned/remembered in the US as well, just perhaps Deepwater Horizon may have had a different outcome...

So for those of you who work in the oil & gas industry, or have friends/relatives who do. Raise a glass tonight at 10PM to recognize the men who sacrificed their ability to get on that chopper home, to ensure that others can today."

[Bandung_Dero]

I remember the large number of modifications carried out on the North Rankin A platform (one of the largest in the world at the time located on the NW Shelf of WA) after the enquiry. One of which was an internal fire proof stairwell installed right up the middle of the Administration/Accommodation module. There were nothing special about the open, existing stairwells.

RIP Rob, a friend from Ban Dung who lost his life about 2 years ago in the Gulf of Mexico.