Piper Alpha

Piper Alpha was an oil platform located in the North Sea approximately north-east of Aberdeen, Scotland. It was operated by Occidental Petroleum (Caledonia) Limited and began production in 1976, initially as an oil-only platform but later converted to add gas production.
An explosion and resulting oil and gas fires destroyed Piper Alpha on 6 July 1988, killing 167 men, including two crewmen of a rescue vessel; 61 workers escaped and survived. Thirty bodies were never recovered. The total insured loss was about £1.7 billion, making it one of the costliest man-made catastrophes ever. At the time of the disaster, the platform accounted for approximately ten percent of North Sea oil and gas production. The accident is the worst offshore oil disaster in terms of lives lost and industry impact.
In Aberdeen, the Kirk of St Nicholas on Union Street has dedicated a chapel in memory of those who died, containing a Book of Remembrance listing them. There is a memorial sculpture in the Rose Garden of Hazlehead Park.
Piper oilfield.
Four companies that later became the OPCAL joint venture obtained an oil exploration licence in 1972. They discovered the "Piper" oilfield located at in early 1973 and began fabrication of the platform, pipelines and onshore support structures. Oil production started in 1976 with about of oil per day, increasing to . A gas recovery module was installed by 1980. Production declined to by 1988. OPCAL built the Flotta oil terminal in the Orkney Islands to receive and process oil from the Piper, Claymore, and Tartan oilfields, each with its own platform. One diameter main oil pipeline ran from Piper Alpha to Flotta, with a short oil pipeline from the "Claymore" platform joining it some to the west. The Tartan field also fed oil to Claymore field and then onto the main line to Flotta. Separate diameter gas pipelines were run from Tartan platform to the Piper, and from Piper to the gas compressing platform MCP-01 some to the northwest.
Construction.
A large fixed platform, Piper Alpha sat atop Piper oilfield, approximately north east of Aberdeen in of water. It was built in four modules separated by firewalls.
The platform was constructed by McDermott Engineering of Ardersier and Union Industrielle d'Entreprise of Cherbourg, with the sections united at Ardersier before tow out during 1975, with production commencing in late 1976. For safety reasons the modules were organised so that the most dangerous platform operations took place far from the personnel areas. The conversion from oil to gas broke this safety concept, with the result that sensitive areas were brought together; for example, the gas compression was next to the control room. The close position of these two areas played a role in the accident.
Piper Alpha produced crude oil and natural gas from 36 wells for delivery to the Flotta oil terminal on Orkney and to other installations by three separate pipelines. At the time of the disaster, Piper was one of the heaviest platforms operating in the North Sea, along with "Magnus" and "Brae B".
Construction upgrades and maintenance background.
During the late 1970s, major works were carried out to enable the platform to meet UK Government gas export requirements. After this work had been completed, Piper Alpha was operating in what was known as "phase 2 mode" (operating with the Gas Conservation Module (GCM)). From the end of 1980 until July 1988 phase 2 mode was its normal operating state. In the late 1980s, major construction, maintenance, and upgrade works were planned by Occidental and by July 1988, the rig was already well into major reconstruction, with six major projects identified, including the change-out of the GCM unit. This meant that the rig was returned to its initial phase 1 mode (i.e., operating without a GCM unit). Despite the complex and demanding work schedule, Occidental made the decision to continue operating the platform in phase 1 mode throughout this period and not to shut it down, as had been originally planned. The planning and controls that were put in place were thought to be adequate. Therefore, Piper continued to export oil at just under 120,000 barrels per day and to export Tartan gas at some per day at standard conditions during this period.
Because the platform was completely destroyed, and many of those involved died, analysis of events can only suggest a possible chain of events based on known facts. Some witnesses to the events question the official timeline.
Timeline of events.
Casualties.
At the time of the disaster 226 people were on the platform; 165 died and 61 survived. Two men from the Standby Vessel "Sandhaven" were also killed.
Aftermath.
There is controversy about whether there was sufficient time for a more effective emergency evacuation. The main problem was that most of the personnel with the authority to order an evacuation had been killed when the first explosion destroyed the control room. This was a consequence of the platform design, which did not include blast walls. Another contributing factor was that the nearby connected platforms Tartan and Claymore continued to pump gas and oil to Piper Alpha until its pipeline ruptured in the heat in the second explosion. Their operations crews did not believe they had authority to shut off production, even though they could see that Piper Alpha was burning.
The nearby diving support vessel "Lowland Cavalier" reported the initial explosion just before 22:00, and the second explosion occurred 22 minutes later. By the time civil and military rescue helicopters reached the scene, flames over 100 metres in height and visible as far away as 100 km (120 km from the "Maersk Highlander") away prevented safe approach. The largest number of survivors (37 out of 59) were recovered by the Fast Rescue Boat of the Standby Safety Vessel, MV "Silver Pit"; coxswain James Clark later received the George Medal. Others awarded the George Medal were Charles Haffey from Methil, Andrew Kiloh from Aberdeen, and James McNeill from Oban.
The blazing remains of the platform were eventually extinguished three weeks later by a team led by firefighter Red Adair, despite reported conditions of winds and waves. The part of the platform which contained the galley where about 100 victims had taken refuge was recovered in late 1988 from the sea bed, and the bodies of 87 men were found inside.
Inquiry and safety recommendations.
The Cullen Inquiry was set up in November 1988 to establish the cause of the disaster. It was chaired by the Scottish judge William Cullen. After 180 days of proceedings, it released its report "Public Inquiry into the Piper Alpha Disaster" (short: "Cullen Report") in November 1990. It concluded that the initial condensate leak was the result of maintenance work being carried out simultaneously on a pump and related safety valve. The inquiry was critical of Piper Alpha's operator, Occidental, which was found guilty of having inadequate maintenance and safety procedures, but no criminal charges were ever brought against the company.
The second part of the report made 106 recommendations for changes to North Sea safety procedures:
They led to the enactment of the Offshore Safety Act 1992 and the making of the Offshore Installations (Safety Case) Regulations 1992.
Most significant of these recommendations was that operators were required to present a safety case and that the responsibility for enforcing safety in the North Sea should be moved from the Department of Energy to the Health and Safety Executive, as having both production and safety overseen by the same agency was a conflict of interest.
In 2013, on the 25th anniversary of the disaster, the video "Remembering Piper - The Night That Changed Our Lives" was released by Step Change in Safety. A three-day conference was held in Aberdeen to reflect on lessons learned from Piper Alpha and industry safety issues in general.
Insurance claims.
The disaster led to insurance claims of around US$1.4 billion, making it at that time the largest insured man-made catastrophe. The insurance and reinsurance claims process revealed serious weaknesses in the way insurers at Lloyd's of London and elsewhere kept track of their potential exposures, and led to their procedures being reformed.
Legacy.
Survivors and relatives of those who died went on to form the Piper Alpha Families and Survivors' Association, which campaigns on North Sea safety issues. The wreck buoy marking the remains of the Piper is approximately 1.1 nautical miles from the replacement Piper Bravo platform. A lasting effect of the Piper Alpha disaster was the establishment of Britain's first "post-Margaret Thatcher" trade union, the Offshore Industry Liaison Committee.
Beginning in 1998, one month after the tenth anniversary, Professor David Alexander, director of the Aberdeen Centre for Trauma Research at Robert Gordon University carried out a study into the long-term psychological and social effects of Piper Alpha. He managed to find thirty-six survivors who agreed to give interviews or complete questionnaires. Almost all of this group reported psychological problems. More than 70 percent of those interviewed reported psychological and behavioural symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder. Twenty-eight said they had difficulty in finding employment following the disaster; it appears that some offshore employers regarded Piper Alpha survivors as Jonahs – bringers of bad luck, who would not be welcome on other rigs and platforms. The family members of the dead and surviving victims also reported various psychological and social problems. Alexander also wrote that "some of these lads are stronger than before Piper. They've learned things about themselves, changed their values, some relationships became stronger. People realised they have strengths they didn't know they had. There was a lot of heroism took place."
Memorials.
In 1991, on the 3rd anniversary of the disaster, a memorial sculpture showing three oil workers, was erected in the Rose Garden within Hazlehead Park in Aberdeen. The figures represent on the west the physical nature of offshore trades, the east youth and eternal movement and the north holds an unwinding spiral that represents oil in the left hand. The sculptor is Sue Jane Taylor, the Scottish artist who had visited the Piper platform the previous year, and based much of her work around what she saw in and around the oil industry. One of the survivors was used as a model for one of the figures. In 1991, Scottish composer James MacMillan wrote "Tuireadh", a piece for clarinet and string orchestra, as a musical complement to the memorial sculpture. In 2008, to mark the 20th anniversary of the disaster, a stage play, "Lest We Forget" was commissioned by Aberdeen Performing Arts and written by playwright Mike Gibb. It was performed in Aberdeen in the week leading up to the anniversary with the final performance on 6 July 2008, twenty years to the day.
Media.
The incident was featured in the 1990 STV documentary television series "Rescue", about the RAF Search and Rescue Force at RAF Lossiemouth, in the episode "Piper Alpha". Coincidentally, the film crew had been documenting the rescue teams at Lossiemouth at the time of the Piper Alpha accident.
On 6 July 2008, BBC Radio 3 broadcast a 90-minute Drama on Three play entitled "Piper Alpha". Drawing on the actual evidence given to the Cullen Inquiry, the events of that night were retold twenty years to the minute after they happened.
National Geographic featured this incident in an episode of its "Seconds From Disaster" documentary. The 2013 documentary film "Fire in the Night" is about the disaster.
In 2018, the disaster was featured on the History documentary series "James Nesbitt's Disasters That Changed Britain". Testimonials were heard from survivors and relatives of victims.