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Piper Alpha, North Sea July 6, 1988
Statistics Event Lessons Learned Type of fire Piper Alpha was once Britain's biggest single The public enquiry that followed no criminal oil and gas producing platform, built in 1976 charges were brought against the company Gas vapour explosion / and produced more than 300,000 barrels of however, 106 recommendations for changes hydrocarbon crude a day – 10% of the country's total – were recommended to the safety operations Ignition Source from below the seabed 125 miles north-east for the North Sea operations all of which we Massive leakage of gas of Aberdeen. accepted by the oil industries. condensate that was ignited causing an explosion, which Oil was discovered at the Piper field in 1973 In the years that followed the piper Alpha led to large oil fires and was brought on stream three years later. disaster the oil companies have spent over Duration of fire By 1980 the steel platform was modified to £2bn on health and safety matters. Within two hours the rig had also take gas and was connected by pipeline collapsed from its position to the Orkney Islands. Since this incident there has not been 300ft above the surface of another North Sea blow out. the sea and become a It was producing about 300,000 barrels of oil flaming pyre of twisted a day for Occidental Petroleum metal. Poor communication during a shift change Number of casualties resulted in a key piece of pipework that had 167 casualties been sealed with a temporary cover and no Cost to industry safety valve was used allowing gas to leak out £1.7 Billion plus and ignited while firewalls that would have resisted a fire on an oil platform failed to cope with the gas explosion over pressures.
Flames reaching over 100m into the air forcing 61 men to survive by jumping 175ft (53m) from the rig's helicopter deck into the References sea.
Piper Alpha. 1988.[Online]. [Accessed 12 October 2014]. http://www.hse.gov.uk/research/rrpdf/rr089.pdf 105 Piper Alpha. Judge Lard Cullen 2013.[Online]. [Accessed 23 October 2014]. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk -scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-22863286