Piper Alpha Incident
Piper Alpha: Lessons Learnt, 2008 Piper Alpha was a large North Sea oil platform that started production in 1976. It produced oil from 24 wells and in its early life it had also produced gas from two wells. It was connected by an oil pipeline to Flotta and by gas pipelines to two other installations. In 1988, Piper Alpha was operated by Occidental Petroleum (Caledonia) Ltd ("OpCal"), a wholly owned subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum Corporation. On 6 July 1988, there was a massive leakage of gas condensate on Piper Alpha, which was ignited causing an explosion which led to large oil fires. The heat ruptured the riser of a gas pipeline from another installation. This produced a further massive explosion and fireball that engulfed the Piper Alpha platform. All this took just 22 minutes. The scale of the disaster was enormous. 167 people died, 62 people survived. It is believed that the leak came from pipe work connected to a condensate pump. A safety valve had been removed from this pipe work for overhaul and maintenance. The pump itself was undergoing maintenance work. When the pipe work from which the safety valve had been removed was pressurised at start-up, it is believed the leak occurred. Initial response from industry As details of the causes of the disaster emerged, every offshore Operator carried out immediate wide-ranging assessments of their installations and management systems. These included: Improvements to the "permit to work" management systems Relocation of some pipeline emergency shutdown valves Installation of sub sea pipeline isolation systems Mitigation of smoke hazards Improvements to evacuation and escape systems Initiation of Formal Safety Assessments The industry invested in the order of £1 billion on these and other safety measures before Lord Cullen's Public Inquiry into the disaster reported. The Cullen Inquiry Lord Cullen chaired the official Public Inquiry into the disaster in two parts. The first was to establish the causes of the