GROUP ONE

S/N NAME MATRIC NUMBER

1. ADEBISI OLUWATAYO G2018/IPS/MSC/PPD/312

2. OKEKE RAPHAEL G2018/IPS/MSC/PPD/325

3. OKAFOR STANLEY G2018/IPS/MSC/PPD/324

4. OLA VICTOR G2018/IPS/MSC/PPD/326

PIPER ALPHA SYNDICATE

INTRODUCTION

The Piper Alpha offshore rig incident was one of the major losses that struck the oil and gas

industry, an accident that happened on Wednesday 6th July, 1988 in the North Sea. It was a tragedy

that plunged the heaviest drilling/production offshore platform into the sea, with a disaster cost

worth $3.4 billion. Of the 226 men on board, a total of 167 men lost their lives with 61 men

surviving the incident. The rig was owned by Occidental Petroleum and was built with production

commencing in 1976 for only oil extraction with about 30,000 tons of oil produced per day. This

accounted for 10% of the oil produced in the United Kingdom.

 REVIEW OF THE ACCIDENT

Root Causes: This is the basic/primary source, or origin of the accident, which can be described

as a transmission error. On the Piper Alpha rig, these causes include:

 Loss of the PTW (permit to work) form stating the removal of the pressure valve from

pump A. This led to the use of pump A, scheduled for maintenance, which resulted in the

incident.

 Design changes…

Remote Causes: These are the escalating causes which supports/fuels the root accidents.

 Inadequacy in design of the rig e.g. failure to install blast walls in the adjoining oil

separation area, proximity of the gas pumps to critical areas like the control room.

 The diesel pumps controlling the automatic fire system were switched to manual, ensuring

that the firefighting system could only be started by hand.

 Collapse of Piper’s emergency procedures. There was no coordination of evacuation of

people from the radio room and rig at large. Neither was the public address system used to

evacuate the 226 people on board at the time.

 Loss of communication between Claymore, Tartan and Piper Alpha oil platform.

 Decision by Claymore and Tartan rig to keep pumping oil through the oil pipeline gathering

system which was connected to the Piper rig caused a back pressure which strengthened

the fire.

 Proximity of control room to critical areas (gas pumps)

  The continuous supply of oil from the two adjoining rigs led to the rupture of two major

gas pipelines on the platform due to the intense heat of the fire. This rupture released an

enormous amount of very combustible fuel (gas) which stimulated the fire.

Latent causes: These are causes that cannot be perceived at first sight but exist. They are causes

which are dependent on the company’s management decisions.

 Poor risk assessment during the change in design of the rig to accommodate oil and gas

production.

 Cost reduction strategy procedures adopted by the management not to install blast walls

for fire explosion prevention due to its expenses.

 The adoption of improved production, reputation, and higher profit more than the safety of

workers on the rig (Improper safety culture)

 The management had a poor/lackadaisical regard for safety as was demonstrated by their

superficial safety procedures.

 Centralized decision making or chain of command

RECOMMENDATION

 Training of engineers to have proper value system and follow their job ethics.

 Every personnel on the rig should be taken through safety drills, fire-fighting and various

trainings before deployment to the rig site.

 The chain of command for the safety personnel should be revised. The safety personnel

should be able to report directly to the managing director of the company.