Published on: Jul 6, 2018
Piper Alpha:
To mark the 30th anniversary of the Piper Alpha disaster I felt I needed to write something about it, as, like so many in Scotland, my working life and to some extent my social life was influenced by the North Sea oil industry in general and that oil rig in particular.
Oil comes to Scotland and we were all to be as rich as Arab Sheiks.
To explain, at the start of the North Sea oil boom in 1974 I started work as a plater at the Redpath Dorman Long rig-building yard at Methil, Fife. The yard’s future looked rosy and skilled workers were promised jobs for life with housing in the locality if needed.
At an induction meeting I attended prior to starting work on Shell UK/Esso’s Auk Alpha rig, we new recruits were addressed by an oil-company executive (Shell I think). This foreign big-shot condescendingly told us that we Scots couldn’t possibly grasp the implications of the boom days that lay ahead. He said we would soon be on a par with the wealthy indigenous Arab citizens of oil-rich Middle East states once the oil was flowing, and our problem would be, not what car we would drive, but what colour our Cadillac would be.
The irony of this promise was not lost on me when, about three years later I was made redundant with hundreds of others.
But at time I went along with the wave of optimism that came with the oil boom and I started work on the Auk jacket, paired off with Brian McGurk, a steel erector from Dundee. We worked as a two-man composite squad fitting riser pipes, sacrificial anodes, and all manner of steelwork onto the 3,000+ ton jacket.
Looking back now we were happy as Larry, swinging about hundreds of feet in the air above the shores of the Forth in man baskets, hoisted by shiny new American cranes, it was as if money was no object where oil was concerned and things looked rosy.
When the Auk sailed out we transferred to the much bigger Brent jacket, which was also under construction at the Methil yard and there we worked happily until the bombshell of redundancy notices hit us in 1977.
Cancel the Cadillac, sign on the dole, or take a chance to cash in on the oil boom?
In 1978, shortly after being made redundant at Methil, I took a chance and with a little help from my friends, many of whom I had made in my working life, started my own steel fabrication company, Kingdom Engineering, based at Cowdenbeath.
One such friend was Charlie Christison from Dundee, who I had worked with in the construction industry in the late 1960s. Charlie had moved onwards and upwards to become a director of the Kestrel Marine oil fabrication yard at Dundee.
In about 1980 Charlie had gave me the chance to prove myself by employing my company on a sub-contract basis making steel blast panels at my Cowdenbeath fabrication shop and site welding at Kestrel’s Dundee yard. This was the first of many contracts my company would carry out on North Sea, oil-related work. LINK
Above pic shows the centre-fold of a sales brochure for my company, Kingdom Engineering. We did all welding work on the two 4.4 kilometre pipeline bundles shown, which linked Occidental’s Scapa subsea template to the Claymore platform and then on to Piper Alpha. These pipelines fed fuel to the Piper inferno long after the initial explosion.
Anyway it was while visiting Kestrel at Dundee that I hailed a taxi and by chance the driver was another friend and former Methil workmate, Freddie McGurk, Brian’s brother, who I knew from Methil and socially from visiting Brian at Dundee.
I asked Freddie why he was not working at his trade, as a rigger/steel-erector, and he explained that he was getting too old for the uncertain nature of employment in the construction industry whereby skilled workers are industrial vagabonds, following the money and the work, when and if, it is available, so he had decided to content himself to lower paid, but steady work, at home driving taxis.
I wished Freddie well and went about my business in Dundee, a city I have a soft spot for.
Shocking TV footage of Piper Alpha survivors landing at Aberdeen raises my concerns for Dundee friends.
Years later, on the morning of 7th July 1988 I watched in horror as pictures of the Piper Alpha oil-rig in flames and survivors landing at Aberdeen were flashed up on my TV screen.
I immediately thought of my Dundee friends, because I recognised one immediately, Jackie Menzies, a scaffolder who I had worked with at Methil. He looked shocked, head down, huddled under a grey blanket as he stepped off the helicopter and was helped/carried into an ambulance by two paramedics and a fireman.
Seeing Jackie got me thinking about the safety of other Dundee men who I knew were offshore, particularly my old mate Brian McGurk, so I immediately called a close friend in Dundee only to be given the shock news that Freddie McGurk was one of the men missing, presumed dead. Apparently Freddie had been lured back to the construction industry by promises of long-term work and big money.
I knew others who died on that rig and on other construction sites and was to some extent conditioned to expect such events (I worked on building Longannet power station where 11 workers had met their death), but Freddie’s death, due to the circumstances of our last meeting had a certain poignancy.
I also knew that Freddie was a strong, resourceful and intelligent man and if he didn’t make it off that rig the chances for survival must have been almost nil.
Old pals, Dr. Armand Hammer, owner of Occidental and Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, get involved.
The day after Piper Alpha exploded Armand Hammer, the owner of Occidental* travelled to Aberdeen to address the press and see survivors of the platform.
Next to travel to Aberdeen was the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher an old friend of Dr Hammer, Thatcher having first met him in September 1979 after he (a donor to the Conservative Party) wrote asking to see her. LINK
At that time Thatcher was warned that he/his company were suspect and had been the subject of “various investigations”, something which she wasn’t aware of, but she nevertheless met and got on famously with him, leading to a long friendship.
The Thatcher – Hammer long standing friendship is evident in his conversations with and letters to the Prime Minister, in which he is obviously comfortable enough to share his views on a wide range of topics from, Leonardo da Vinci’s notebook, Shale Oil fracking, taxation and on to OPEC, which Hammer saw as the greatest threat to the world. LINK
After Mrs Thatcher travelled to Aberdeen where she visited survivors she said the Government felt it was right to contribute £1,000,000 to the disaster fund “to get it off to a good start”. “Those who have suffered so much should not have shortage of money added to their problems.” she reasoned.
Mrs Thatcher’s pledge matched that of Occidental Petroleum Corporation chairman and chief executive Dr. Armand Hammer, on whom she lavished praise, stating:
“He is a marvellous person who we have known for years and who has given money to many charities. He is a man who has by his own efforts done well. He makes certain that as he himself has prospered so he helps others and I am sure he will look after the families.” LINK
Next to visit the survivors was the Prince of Wales, also an old friend of Dr Hammer as was his then wife, Princess Diana.
Footnote* [The operating company of Piper Alpha was generally known as Occidental, but was in fact a joint-venture of Occidental Petroleum Caledonia the operator and largest shareholder with 36.5%, Texaco with a 23.5%, Union Texas Petroleum with 20%, and Thomson North Sea Ltd. 20% of the shares.]
A judge is promptly appointed to lead a comprehensive public inquiry and he is lauded as the “right judge to handle such a daunting inquiry”.
Two days after Dr Hammer & Co visited Aberdeen on the 10th of July in a statement to the House of Commons, Cecil Parkinson MP, the Secretary of State for Energy, stated that he had appointed Lord Cullen to head a public inquiry which would take place under the Offshore Installations (Public Inquiries) Regulations 1974 at Aberdeen
Like everyone else, I fully expected the Scottish justice system to find out who was responsible for the loss of so many lives and deal with them severely. The country expected no less. The Glasgow Herald of 11 July hailed the judge appointed, Lord Cullen, as the “the right judge to handle such a daunting inquiry”
Jurisprudence ran in the Cullen family, he was the son of a sheriff and grandson of a judge, and had gained a high reputation in his brief career on the bench, and at that time I had confidence that he would see to it that justice was done. LINK
The front page of the same edition of The Glasgow Herald that carried Lord Cullen’s appointment was headlined “No gas leak before the blast, says Occidental” LINK .
This rush to proclaim their innocence by Occidental was telling and contradicted reports given in phone calls from the rig to two girls. These calls were rather surprisingly pushed to page 3, as was a specific report from the girlfriend of a welder who died on the blast rig headed: “Welder who lost his life warned about gas leak, says girlfriend”. LINK
Reports of gas leaks on Piper Alpha were plentiful and not confined to the tabloid press with the New Scientist of 14 July reporting that workers had smelled gas leaks two days before the explosion. LINK
Everyone believed that the judge appointed to investigate such claims would have a wide remit to allow him to get to the bottom of all these claims, and recommend the appropriate remedies/sanctions.
Lord Cullen’s inquiry to have wide powers and remit.
And it transpired that the judge’s remit was a comprehensive one, with the inquiry having “ full powers for appointing experts, summoning witnesses etc”.
The Secretary of State for Energy, Mr Parkinson also said the inquiry would be as full and far reaching as necessary and would “report to me on the circumstances of the accident and its cause together with any observations and recommendations which he thinks fit to make with a view to the preservation of life and the avoidance of similar accidents in the future.”
In a later announcement on 14 July Mr Parkinson announced that the Public Hearing of the inquiry was scheduled to be held in Aberdeen from 19 January 1989 with a preliminary hearing on 11 November 1988 and that Lord Cullen the chair of the inquiry would be assisted by three assessors. They were Mr Malcolm Ford CBE, Professor Frank Lees and Mr Brian Appleton and Scottish Law Officers would represent the public interest.
Mr Parkinson also stated that to assist Lord Cullen, as a matter of urgency, a technical investigation was to be conducted jointly by the Department of Energy and the Health and Safety Commission to establish the cause of the accident and report back to the inquiry.
The technical investigation was to be headed by Mr James Richard Petrie, Director of Safety in the Department of Energy’s Petroleum Engineering Division.
After only two months The Department of Energy issue their Technical Investigation Interim Report, upon which Occidental claimed to know the cause of the explosion and who was to blame.
After the initial shock and anger the public sat back and waited for Lord Cullen’s inquiry to get on with its job. But before that job had even got into full swing, on September 15 1988, just over two months after the explosion that had rocked a nation, the Technical Investigation Interim Report into the disaster on the Piper Alpha platform by Mr J. R. Petrie was delivered to Lord Cullen.
When this interim report was circulated, one possible cause of the disaster, amongst others, was that condensate (gas liquid) leaking from blank flanges fitted to pipework (during maintenance of a safety valve for a compressor) may have caused the initial explosion when it came into contact with an ignition source such as a spark.
The Department of Energy, interim report, was entirely speculative on this and other possibilities. It couldn’t have been otherwise in the short time (2 months) it had taken to investigate. An investigation made almost impossible given that much of the evidence lay in a thirty thousand ton molten lump at the bottom of the North Sea, along with the bodies of the men who may have witnessed what happened.
Nor could the report be considered independent or objective, given that it was compiled by an interested party. Mr. J. R. “Jim” Petrie, who was the head of the Department of Energy safety directorate, the regulator whose duty it was to ensure that the Piper Alpha was operated safely by its owner Occidental.
A department which had inspected Piper Alpha just four days before the explosion and found everything to be in order.
It goes without saying that Mr Petrie would believe that his department were satisfied that Piper Alpha was operating safely, even when it had been demonstrated by subsequent events to have become the most unsafe and deadly offshore platform in the world.
Critics of the high-casualty North Sea offshore industry had been saying for years that the Department of Energy had too cosy a relationship with the oil companies who were represented by The UK Offshore Operators Association (UKOOA).
Many of the Department of Energy’s top safety personnel retired early to take up jobs with oil companies. Jim Petrie’s former boss had done this and Mr Petrie himself would soon retire and spend almost 9 years between 1991 and 2000 as a part-time safety consultant with UKOOA.
Nevertheless Mr J. R. Petrie’s Technical Investigation Interim Report for the Department of Energy now formed the cornerstone of Lord Cullen’s inquiry and gave Occidental Petroleum Caledonia Limited (Occidental), the rig owners, a straw to clutch at as they floundered, drowning in a sea of negative criticism because of their poor record on safety.
Singling out the ‘blank flange theory’ from the Department of Energy’s preliminary, technical investigation interim report (Petrie Report), Occidental served a “Notice of Blame” on Alexander Rankin of Score UK, the living supervisor of a dead operative who had worked on the blank flange on the day of the explosion. LINK
Occidental also advised Lord Cullen, Chair of the Piper Alpha Inquiry, of their “Notice of Blame”.
So as far as Occidental, the rig owners were concerned, as evidenced by Dr Hammer’s denial of liability from day one, and following J. Petrie’s report, the cause of the explosion was simply not their fault.
Occidental had narrowed down the source of the gas leak to one particular flange and attributed blame to the acts or failures of an employee of a sub-contractor (Score UK) working for them.
In short Occidental, aided by a report from their chums in the Department of Energy had used that old Scots alibi employed by every bairn in the land when they are questioned about some wrongdoing: “It wis’nae me”.
Occidental’s alibi was based on a report by J. Petrie, the head of the Department of Energy, Safety Directorate who had every incentive to show, not his department’s failings in regulating Occidental, but rather a failure of sub-contractors to act safely, I.E. To adhere to Occidental’s permit to work (PTW) rules.
Given a free hand to come up with answers and little or no concrete evidence to go on, what else would The Petrie Report be likely to say? Especially when, as he acknowledged: “the installation operator, Occidental Petroleum (Caledonia) Ltd. have given unstinted co‐operation to my investigation.”
A crude analogy of the Petrie investigation would be to imagine that as a known criminal with a history of knife crimes I’m found, bloodstained knife in hand, standing over a dead body and though suspected of causing their death…. I’m given a key role in the police investigation.
Whodunit wouldn’t be me, I reckon.
It is worth looking a little more closely into J. R. Petrie’s interim report.
The report of James Richard Petrie, Director of Safety, Petroleum Engineering Division, Department of Energy, dated 15 September 1988.
This 10-Chapter report was ordered by the Secretary of State for Energy on 14 July 1988. For a report so important (it is often referred to as the ‘cornerstone’ of Lord Cullen’s Piper Alpha report) it covers much in a short space of time (63 days), but to my mind it raises many questions as to how it comes to its Chapter 8 conclusions (assumptions) and even more questions about what it ignores.
Chapter 8.1, “Possible Causes” LINK *, Mr Petrie begins by stating that the condition of the platform prior to the accident on 6 July was established by statements and interviews with the relief crew.
His report states that for 3 days the platform had been running on a Phase 1 mode (Operation of the platform without the gas conservation module was described as phase 1 operation, operation with gas conservation as phase 2.) for which there were no written instructions, a mode that the platform in its present condition, had only been used for in one 60-day period, following an explosion in March 1984.
The report detailed how, in the Phase 1 mode, gas is processed at almost three times the pressure of the normal Phase 2 mode without some of the safeguards that prevent potentially damaging liquids entering the gas compressors.
Operating this relatively new, Phase 1 mode, the report stated that there were 5 Occidental operatives, the minimum number required to operate the plant, and one of these operatives, the one who operated the crucial gas production area where the accident was thought to have come from was a: “contractor who was working on his own and had only arrived on the installation that day”.
In addition to this, the three man management team on the platform had all been temporarily promoted above their normal positions that day as the permanent operations superintendant was not available.
So it is clear that the production platform was operating in anything but a tried and tested, normal, manner.
Chapter 8.2, Primary Cause of the Accident: Discussion and Preliminary Conclusions, Mr Petrie described the time of the first sightings of the fire and first explosion as being at about 2200 hrs in the gas compression area of Module C, which then caused a further fire in Module B; though the he didn’t rule out the possibility that the reverse was the case. I.E. Module B fire/explosion caused same in Module C.
The report could find no evidence of what caused the condensate/gas to ignite, but the gas turbines, which drive the gas compressors, are given as a possible source.
The report states the explosion and fire eventually caused the virtual destruction of the platform two hours and 45 minutes (2445 hrs) after the initial explosion.
Chapter 8.3, Possible causes of the Primary Event, This section states that the two most probable causes of the accident have been identified, but more investigative work needed to be done. This section of Chapter 8 does, in part at least, appear to rely on witness statements of survivors, who the author, Mr Petrie thanks in the Acknowledgements note at the end of his report.
In essence the two scenarios that may have caused the gas leak were:
1/ A sub-contract mechanical fitter engaged on mechanical maintenance work didn’t fit a blank flange, or didn’t fit it properly, to a temporarily out-of-service gas pipe from which a safety valve had been removed. When the pipework was later put under pressure by operators attempted to start an out-of-service condensate pump, condensate/gas escaped from the blank flange and found an unknown ignition source.
OR
2/ Because of a plant disruption, liquid condensate entered gas pipework carrying it to a second-stage reciprocating compressor designed to deal with gas only. This caused parts of the compressor to disintegrate releasing condensate, gas and flammable liquid into the atmosphere where it found an unknown ignition source.
The section 8 ends by concluding that the more likely of the two scenarios above was the first one, No 1, that is the improperly fitted blank flange being brought under pressure by plant operators mistakenly attempting to start a pump it was connected to.
*Footnote: [J. R. Petrie’s interim report of 15 September 1988 had eleven sections. For clarity (the photocopy I have isn’t great) I decided to transcribe Section 8 with OCR and print as an Adobe Acrobat document. The reference to MV Silver Pitt therein is not an OCR error. The Petrie report repeatedly refers to the vessel in this, erroneous manner, in this and other sections. This is perhaps indicative of the accuracy of the report in general. If Mr Petrie was as knowledgeable of the conditions in the North Sea offshore oil sector as his position demanded he should have known that the standby safety vessel was a converted trawler named after The Silver Pit, a well charted valley or pit in the North Sea due east of the Humber estuary.]
Commentary on J. R. Petrie’s report.
In Chapter 8.1 the report makes the assumption that Occidental’s operators and the supervisors would all have been able to operate the Phase 1 process as this had been done by the same people on same the platform over four years previously, in 1984.
This, the first of many assumptions by the author, seems to be speculative at best with no supporting evidence. Nor could there have been evidence as to the operators familiarity with a process used four years previously as many of those operators were dead.
The author offers no explanation as to what caused the explosion in Piper Alpha’s gas conservation module in 1984, which necessitated the employment of the Phase 1 process then. This surely may have been relevant as to what caused the later explosion and should have been explained.
It is clear from the summary of his report that Mr Petrie’s logic in favouring Scenario 1 as being the probable cause of gas/condensate leak centres on the initial explosion at 22.00 hrs (a time later contradicted by witnesses at the Public Inquiry and others not called to give evidence), and having its origin in events following on from the tripping (failure) of B Pump at 21.45 hrs.
B Pump tripping was the start of a chain of events in Mr Petrie’s report.
In describing his favoured scenario Mr Petrie (without the benefit of first hand evidence or fact) assumes the plant operators acted in certain ways, mostly with good intent, but when he views the actions of a dead workman who was tasked with fitting a blank flange at about 1400 hrs that day he destroys that man’s reputation by implying that he acted negligently and unprofessionally when there is not a shred of evidence to support this.
Laying the blame squarely on pipefitter John Sutton, Mr Petrie asserts: “The open pipe ends should have had blank flanges fitted to them and there is hearsay evidence to suggest that this was done but it is not known whether gaskets and bolts were correctly fitted.” So in the most important conclusion in his report Mr Petrie admits that he relies on hearsay evidence and negative supposition.
It simply cannot be right to assume a qualified tradesman acted unprofessionally without hard evidence to confirm this.
Mr Petrie also destroys the reputation of Occidental plant operator Robert Vernon who is assumed to have caused the gas condensate/leak by starting a pump which was out of service and electrically isolated, on similarly flimsy evidence. Even though (unlike his comments re Terry Sutton) Mr Petrie describes Mr Vernon’s actions as appearing to “react to the failure of Pump B ….to have energetically pursued the task” So while assumptions about the actions of both men are made the tone and substance regarding the sub-contractor is harsher than that regarding the plant operator.
Mr Petrie’s conclusions seem to ignore the many, many, other possible causes of a condensate/gas leak that may have had nothing to do with either the failure of B Pump, the attempted start-up of A Pump, or the RSV pipework blank flange.
Two days before the blast on Monday 4th July, Craig Barclay, a welder, had refused to ignite his welding torch because of the strong smell of gas. His actions were supported by the safety officer, and other witnesses told of their loved ones calling home by telephone reporting that they had to wear gas masks at times such was the stench of gas, yet this unexplained danger was apparently not pursued by Mr. Petrie as a possible indication of an earlier problem that could have caused the fatal explosion. LINK
Other possible causes of the explosion, such as the possibility that the process pipework or associated mechanical equipment failed, or that it was caused by an Acetylene gas bottle accident or other work-related causes on what was essentially a construction site within a petrochemical/gas plant, do not feature.
I have employed professionals with many years experience of working in the major oil-refinery & petrochemical/gas plants at Grangemouth and Mossmorran, which are simply onshore versions of an offshore production platform and have some experience myself and can say with certainty that it wouldn’t be possible to read the drawings of the many miles of complex internal piping systems and associated pumps, motors, valves, compressors etc., contained in Piper Alpha in a period of two months. Far less to fully understand them, analyse them, and from an understanding of them to narrow down the offending item within the network to being a single blank flange or spade.
It seems to me that there has been a rush to judgement by the Department of Energy safety staff, of which Mr Petrie is the head, and it’s not as if they knew the Piper Alpha like the back of their hand. Their visits to the rig had been few and fleeting.
A typical North Sea oil rig or platform would, on average only see an inspector of the Department of Energy’s Petroleum Engineering Division once every 12-18 months and their visit would be prearranged and last a matter of hours. The last visit by an inspector to Piper Alpha just 11 days before the explosion was by a new man to the job Mr. R. D. Jenkins (joined PED in March 1987), and his visit had lasted only 10 hours.
The Department of Energy left it to Occidental to get on with business to such and extent that the 1984 explosion and evacuation investigation was not even investigated by the department in which Mr Petrie was safety supremo, and instead they left it to Occidental to compile their own report into that incident.
As if that wasn’t bad enough Occidental kept their findings secret and only surreptitiously released their report on the 1984 explosion and evacuation on 15 September 1988, the same day as J. R. Petrie released his report.
The 1984 Occidental report identified the fact that the explosion could have had far more serious consequences, but for the fact that it happened in the gas production area at a time when all the staff were at the canteen area having their lunch. This was described by one senior Occidental executive thus: “we were very lucky”. LINK
Occidental also recognised the fact that there were many contraventions of the various statutory obligations which laid them open to “significant exposure here and that prosecution is possible”.
This warning came in a Memo from Brian L. Smith to Gene Grogan, Occidental’s Vice President of Engineering, North Sea, dated 29 March 1984 copied to all senior Occidental staff declaring omerta on their report, an edict which was particularly applicable “to the Department of Energy“, the regulating body that had such a cosy and trusting relationship with the oil company that they allowed them to police themselves. LINK
In 1984 The Department of Energy may have flown out inspectors, but the investigation was left to Occidental, who promptly hid their findings away from the prying eyes of all concerned, particularly the Department of Energy.
By the autumn of 1988 Occidental had reached agreement and paid compensation by a “mid-Atlantic formula” to the dependants of the 167 dead men.
As Lord Cullen’s public inquiry team gathered their facts in the autumn of 1988, Occidental and representatives of the families of the deceased reached agreement on compensation.
This compensation was paid on the basis that Occidental denied liability for the deaths and was in full and final settlement, which prevented any further claims being made against them.
Lord Caplan would later praise Occidental’s prompt action thus: “compromise was reached on the assumption that the level of damages finally offered and accepted represented an approximate mid-point between the assumed Texas level of damages and the assumed Scottish one. This basis of settlement was referred to by the parties as a “mid-Atlantic formula”. The relatively prompt settlement of claims is clearly to be applauded on humanitarian grounds”.
Some £110m was paid out by Occidental to the families of the 167 men who perished on the platform and others who were injured.
It is believed that the average payment for a bereaved family was about £600,000, though individual settlements would vary, as well as being strictly confidential.
In January 1989 Lord Cullen’s public inquiry began taking evidence from witnesses in Aberdeen.
When the inquiry examined the lead up to the tragedy, it soon became clear to the public that Occidental had a shameful past. Their record with men, material, and management on Piper Alpha was woeful.
Not long before the disaster, Occidental had pleaded guilty to offences under the Health & Safety at Work Act, which resulted in the death of Frederick Sutherland, a rigger who died after a fall on the rig in September 1987. LINK
The first witness to give evidence, Occidental’s own engineering expert, Konrad Wottge, told Lord Cullen’s inquiry that in a 65 month period between January 1983 and June 1988 there had been 75 oil and gas leaks recorded on Piper Alpha, an average of over one a month. LINK
Another witness, American diver, Joseph Wells told of how he had taken shelter on Piper Alpha on the night of the disaster and had to scramble to safety in horrendous conditions. He also told of his experiences when an explosion in 1984 caused a full evacuation of the platform and of how, in that earlier incident, he had to wait two hours before he was evacuated. This wait was largely down to the fact that the explosion had knocked out all the communication systems on the platform.
As a result of these two experiences on Piper Alpha Mr Wells decided never to return to the offshore oil industry. LINK
Occidental, as the owner and operator of the rig, were found to have shirked just about every responsibility that they had. In whatever Lord Cullen examined they were found to be wanting. From the rescue boat, a converted trawler, the ageing Silver Pit, to the fire water deluge system, which hadn’t worked for two years due to rust blocking the nozzles; then there was the accommodation and fire-fighting vessel Tharos, which was one of many emergency and safety assets that were not fit for purpose, likewise inoperable fire pumps and unavailable life-jackets.
Here is just an extract from Lord Cullen’s damning report: “The Silver Pit was essentially unsuitable for the purpose of effecting the rescue of survivors … [and] this led in a number of instances to distress and delay in the process of recovering survivors.” All these failings should, he said, have been obvious to Occidental’s managers: “They were too easily satisfied that the permit to work system was being operated correctly, relying on the absence of any feedback of problems as indicating that all was well.”
“They failed to provide the training required to ensure that an effective permit to work system was operated in practice. In the face of a known problem with the deluge system they did not become personally involved in probing the extent of the problem and what should be done to resolve it as soon as possible. “They adopted a superficial attitude to the assessment of risk of major hazard. They failed to ensure that emergency training was being provided as they intended. The platform personnel and management were not prepared for a major emergency as they should have been. The safety policies and procedures were in place: the practice was deficient.”
But while Lord Cullen was highly critical of almost every aspect of Occidental’s management, especially the Permit To Work system, he was largely silent on the body that was supposed to regulate oil platforms and make sure they were up to scratch, the Department of Energy.
And it must have been awkward for Lord Cullen to bite the hand that fed him so to speak. Commissioned by the Department of Energy and relying largely on their technical investigation as gospel he never made it abundantly clear that there was not a shred of evidence to support J R Petrie’s theory (also adopted as gospel by Occidental) that the blank flange being improperly fitted had caused the leak that caused the explosion. The extent to which Lord Cullen focused on the blank flange is evidenced by the fact that the word “flange” features 198 times in his final Report.
Nor did Lord Cullen state the obvious, namely that the cause of the explosion might have had nothing to do with manual operations such as fitting the blank flange which required a Permit To Work and might simply be a material failure or a fault of man or material completely unconnected to the safety valve pipework. Rather his concentration on the blank flange theory, which centred on the Permit To Work system was such that he mentioned “PTW” or “Permit” 364 times in his final Report.
Of course it is possible that the cause of the explosion may have been the blank flange on the safety valve pipework, which, first Mr Petrie, then Occidental, claimed had been improperly fitted by Score UK, but that is only one possible cause of the gas release, among many, many, others. For Mr. Petrie to identify an item which weighed 33kg out of Piper Alpha’s 34,000ton of steelwork that lay on the sea-bed after only a short investigation was astonishing.
And just because the explosion happened at around the time that the safety valve pipework was thought to have been erroneously pressurized by attempting to start Pump A, it doesn’t follow that these two events (one speculative) were related to each other.
In fact even the similar timing between these two events was in dispute by several different parties.
Sixteen of the 34 Piper Alpha survivors who gave evidence to the Inquiry said they heard an explosion before the 2200 hrs one. Other parties, who were not brought to the public inquiry to give evidence, such as Frank McFarlane who helped survivors onto the Tharos, later testified to reporters that they heard a small explosion about 15 minutes before the large, major explosion at 2200 hrs. A small explosion which coincided in timing with Pump B tripping.
Might it not be the case that the earlier reported (and ignored by the Cullen inquiry) explosion caused Pump B to trip and might Pump B have failed due to an explosion rather than indirectly causing an explosion by actions arising from its failure?
This contradictory evidence simply wouldn’t go away and was the subject of a Frontline Scotland TV documentary entitled ‘Piper Alpha pair wrongly blamed’ in 1998. LINK
This BBC documentary by Jane Franchi, centred on the fact that the only contemporaneous log book entry from Tharos showed an explosion 15 minutes before 10pm as did 16 eyewitnesses. But don’t look for a copy of this video, none exists.
Following the BBC’s Frontline documentary Alex Salmond, MP, leader of the SNP and later to be Scotland’s First Minister wrote to the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, and the Scottish Lord Advocate, Lord Hardie, calling for the Piper Alpha Inquiry to be reopened to investigate the reports of an earlier explosion, but the establishment weren’t having this and refused.
At the time of the Public Inquiry despite the awful state of the platform and the contradictory evidence regarding the time of the first explosion (which would have destroyed the “blank flange” theory), Lord Cullen concentrated on past failings in the Permit To Work system for which a 1987 fatality had also been blamed, but there were other failings that had been identified in the troubled life of the platform. It surely can’t have escaped Lord Cullen’s notice that a gas and oil production platform such as Piper Alpha has many miles of pipework of one kind or another and if the Fire Water Deluge pipework was corroded to such an extent to make it useless, then other pipework might be in a similar state of disrepair and be liable to rupture causing an explosion?
On November 12 1990 John Wakeham published Lord Cullen’s 400-page, 2 volume report as a Command Paper.
The first volume of the report dealt with the possible causes of the disaster and its aftermath and the second made 106 recommendations.
Volume 1 of the report confirmed that the cause of the disaster was a leak of condensate in the gas compression module which found an ignition source causing an explosion that knocked out the main power supply and disabling the control room. The report however did not positively identify the source of the leak or attribute blame for it.
The report was widely critical of Occidental citing many deficiencies including those quoted above and this led to politicians demanding that John Wakeham, The Secretary of State for Energy (Cecil Parkinson had moved on to Trade & Industry and had been forced to resign because of a sex scandal), initiate a prosecution of Occidental. Mr Wakeham pointed out that any prosecution decision would have to be made by the Scottish Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser.
Such was the clamour for prosecution that on the morning following the publication of Lord Cullen’s report Scotland’s largest circulation newspaper, The Daily Record, published a front page with a single caption in huge letters which simply stated:- CHARGE THEM!
Volume 2 of the report made 106 recommendations to bring the North Sea offshore oil regime under control.
The main among these recommendation being that the Department of Energy (The government department pushing for maximum production and revenue for the exchequer) would be stripped of its responsibility for offshore safety. This role was to be handed over to the Health and Safety Executive, the body responsible for safety on industrial plants on the U.K. mainland.
Lord Cullen was widely lauded for this as being a radical change to the existing regulatory framework, I.E. the transfer of power from DoE to H&SE. But it was hardly radical, more a matter of common sense to most people that the functions of production and safety be separated.
It was madness that the North Sea offshore industry with “light touch self-regulation” had ever been exempt from such an obvious safeguard. That a laissez–faire regime did exist was due to the Conservative government.
If the government had listened to wise counsel in 1980 they would have immediately adopted what would later become the main Cullen recommendation and perhaps have averted the 1988 disaster. Why didn’t they?
In 1978, the number of fatalities and serious accidents in the North Sea had led a Labour government to set up the Burgoyne Committee to examine the North Sea offshore safety regime.
The committee did not report until 1980 by which time the Conservatives were in power. The Secretary of State for Energy, Hamish Gray, opposed a minority report of the Burgoyne Committee by its two trade union members (Roger Lyons, General Secretary of the Manufacturing Science & Finance (MSF) and J Miller of the TGWU) LINK
The minority report argued for the transfer of regulatory authority from the Department of Energy to the Health & Safety Executive to counter “the conflicting pressure emanating from the exigencies of production … and the requirements of safety” Exactly what Lord Cullen would call for 8 years later.
In April 1980, before the Easter recess, Tam Dalyell, MP pressed Norman St John Stevas MP, The Leader of The House of Commons to obtain an early debate on the Burgoyne report, specifically so that he could persuade the Minister of Energy to accept the minority report that offshore safety should be devolved to the Health & Safety Executive.
Mr Dalyell did this again in May, June and July of that year, so urgent did he see the need to have the Health & Safety executive assume sole responsibility for regulating the North Sea offshore oil regime, but he failed in this regard and it wasn’t until October 1980 that he managed to obtain the debate.
In that debate Mr Dalyell doggedly, passionately, and eloquently pleaded for the minority report to be adopted and was joined in this by Dick Douglas, MP, Bob Maclennan, MP, Bob Cryer, MP and Earnie Ross MP all of whom saw the dangers of the present system whereby a cosy relationship existed between the oil companies and those responsible for the present safety arrangements through the Department of Energy.
Despite the best efforts of the above MPs the amendment tabled by Tam Dalyell in support of the minority report to the Burgoyne report being adopted was defeated by 99 votes to 60. LINK
So I was amazed to read of Lord Cullen being praised, as if he had just invented the wheel with regard to his recommendation that an independent safety body not connected with production I.E. the Health & Safety Executive take over this role from the Department of Energy. It was something every right minded person in industry knew was essential and should have been adopted by government in 1980.
The rest of Lord Cullen’s recommendations were sensible and equally obvious measures that were employed in petrochemical and oil refining plants onshore or had been highlighted by the Piper Alpha explosion, fire and rescue attempts.
Perhaps recommendation 107, the one that Lord Cullen didn’t make was the most important one; I.E. that Occidental be charged with failing to keep a safe working environment & thereby causing the deaths of 167 men.
The one glaring omission from Lord Cullen’s recommendations, bearing in mind that he was given cart blanche to make “recommendations which he thinks fit to make with a view to the preservation of life and the avoidance of similar accidents in the future” was a simple recommendation that Occidental be prosecuted for causing 167 deaths by their negligence.
What the Daily Record had said, but put in legalese.
What better way to protect lives than to bring the full weight of the law to bear on those who manage death-trap facilities such as Piper Alpha, than to prosecute them in court?
If custodial sentences could have been achieved so much the better, but penalising the greedy oligarchs like Hammer, who put money before safety, by massive fines would hit them where it hurts, in their pockets and make them get their act together with regards safety.
Everyone wanted the 107th recommendation, but timidity, caution, or worse, caused Lord Cullen to stop short of it, despite the overwhelming evidence supporting it.
Only one doughty campaigner, Gavin Cleland who lost his son Robert on Piper Alpha continued to protest till the day he died, at what he saw as the injustice that Occidental were not charged with corporate manslaughter. LINK
I am no lawyer but it seems inconceivable to me that Lord Cullen had Occidental documents that showed that their insurers had inspected Piper Alpha in 1983 and recommended modifications to the water deluge system and the procedures for testing and verifying its efficacy, furthermore that despite these warnings and subsequent demonstrations of the inadequacy of the water system in the 1984 explosion, nothing was done to remedy this vital life-saving equipment and it was allowed to deteriorate and prove useless when it was needed to save lives in the 1988 explosion, yet Lord Cullen found there was no case to recommend prosecution.
Despite incontrovertible evidence that the system for putting out fires on the platform had, for years, been out of action because it was clogged up with rust, the best Lord Cullen could come up with by way of condemnation was: “In the face of a known problem with the deluge system they did not become personally involved in probing the extent of the problem and what should be done to resolve it as soon as possible.”
Lord Cullen had found Piper Alpha to be a death trap rig with no fire extinguisher system, but by not going on to recommend prosecution of Oxy, the platform owners, for the deaths of 167 men whose safety was their responsibility, Lord Cullen’s condemnation was a statement full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
In 1990 after Lord Cullen’s report Occidental (Now Elf Enterprise Caledonia) filed a civil action against their sub contractors (inherited from Occidental) to recover the £110m compensation settlements paid by their insurers, from the insurers of their sub-contractors.
Occidental did not comment on Lord Cullen’s two-part report. They probably couldn’t believe their luck that despite having a lot of bad things said about them they had got off Scot-free, with no recommendation for prosecution.
Occidental’s Notice of Blame, aided by the Department of Energy’s ‘blank flange theory’ had diverted attention from the many other failings on their platform.
It was almost common currency now that the blank flange misfit was being bandied about as the most probable cause and Occidental explosion. The dead man who was thought to have fitted the flange was now said to have only tightened the bolts “finger tight”. So, not surprisingly, this totally fanciful hypothesis first floated by J. R. Petrie was part of the argument in an insurance claim Occidental brought against their sub-contractors in 1990.
In 1991 debate in the House of Commons, Frank Doran revealed that the secret report on the 1984 explosion on Piper Alpha gave rise to 4 grounds for criminal prosecution, but they were not acted on lest they caused embarrassment to The Department of Energy.
Frank Doran MP revealed what Lord Cullen failed to mention about the 1984 Piper Alpha explosion and evacuation, which if acted on by the Department of Energy would almost certainly have led to safety measures being adopted, which in turn may have prevented or at the very least mitigated the loss of life in the 1988 disaster.
To understand what a cosy relationship the Department of Energy had with, not just Occidental, but with all the North Sea oil companies and the body that represents them, the UK Offshore Operators Association (UKOOA), it is helpful to read all of Frank Doran’s and other MP’s contributions in this debate LINK, but a good idea of how he viewed it can be gleaned from this extract below:
The late Frank Doran MP “any complaint is unjustified if the oil companies say that it is unjustified”.
On March 20 1991, while parliamentarians pushed for North Sea offshore changes, J. R. Petrie, the Department of Energy regulator who presided over this, the most dangerous offshore oil arena in the world, shared his wisdom on safety with an international audience in the USA.
J. R. Petrie was Deputy Head of Offshore Safety Division, Health and Safety Executive, the body taking over from the Department of Energy, following Lord Cullen’s report March 22 in 1991, when he addressed an International Workshop seminar in Galthersburg, Maryland, USA between March 20 and 22.
The workshop was held by the US Department of National Institute of Standards and Technology to examine new developments in the application of risk analysis in offshore oil and gas operations.
Mr Petrie was quite unequivocal in his view that the incorrectly fitted blank pipe flange had left a pipe in a “non-gas tight condition”, he stated in his paper:
“Both the Public Inquiry and my technical investigation concluded that the immediate cause was that condensate had been inadvertently admitted to an unsealed pipe end. The pipe end had been left in a non-gas tight condition as a result of incomplete maintenance work.”
This statement by Petrie is simply untrue. For all his failings Lord Cullen did not, and could not have found that the blank flange theory, that is, that two dead workmen had left maintenance work on the flange unsealed, was the cause of the disaster, for the simple reason that there was no hard evidence to reach such a finding.
The message from Mr Petrie to the assembled experts from the petroleum industry, consulting firms, government agencies, and academic and research institutions from all over the world was that the North Sea offshore industry in general and Piper Alpha in particular was in robust health due to his regulation and it was simply a matter of human error by workmen in failing to carry out prescribed tasks in accordance with the proper procedures that were in place, which had caused the Piper Alpha disaster. LINK
In short Mr Petrie was saying the Piper Alpha disaster wasn’t his department’s, or Occidental’s fault, but rather the fault of the careless working man. He didn’t mention the fact that after a major explosion and evacuation of the Piper Alpha in 1984 his department didn’t even carry out an investigation into its causes, but rather left that important task to the oil company which operated the offending facility. The damning report that resulted was promptly hidden from view and didn’t see the light of day until it was sneaked out on the same day as the interim report by Petrie into the Piper Alpha disaster.
In December 1991 over three years after the Piper Alpha disaster The Scottish Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser gives Occidental the all clear.
As the public waited for the Crown Office Prosecution Service to make its move, the head of that department, Lord Fraser, in answer to a question in parliament at Westminster announced that there would be no criminal prosecutions arising out of the Cullen Report into the Piper Alpha disaster. This was because Lord Cullen had noted that there “was no direct evidence as to what happened” and accordingly proof was dependent upon inference from the evidence. LINK
I have to say that I agree with Lords Cullen and Fraser that there was no hard evidence as to what caused the leak of gas that resulted in an explosion sufficient to prove criminality. But surely there was evidence of Occidental’s failure to provide workers with a safe working environment on their platform and also provide functioning emergency evacuation procedures in the event of an accident?
It is self evident that this was not the case and with Occidental’s track record of failures in the past, failures which were promised to be remedied, but were not, there must have been some breaches of employment and Health and Safety legislation that the Crown Office & Prosecution Service, which Lord Fraser heads, could have prosecuted in a Scots court.
This was the case in 1982 when three men were killed after a gangway accident between the Tharos and Piper Alpha which resulted in Occidental and the obscure company which employed the men, Clydesdale Process Engineering, being found guilty of breaches in Offshore Installations legislation. LINK
This was also the case in 1987 when Frank Sutherland a rigger was killed after a fall on Piper Alpha. LINK
Admittedly there was physical evidence to inspect in those cases, which was not the case in the latest disaster to befall Occidental, but even if a unique action by the Crown Office Procurator Fiscal Service broke with past precedent one would think that a ground-breaking prosecution could have taken place. The gravity of the situation and the past record of serial offender Occidental demanded it.
Sadly, those politicians, trade unionists and many others who wished to see Occidental brought to book by the Scottish legal system were to be disappointed as the Lord Advocate didn’t display the wit or the will to take Occidental to court. The Lord Advocate’s decision was final, without detailed reasoning, and there was no appeal against it.
Did subsequent directorships, (Lord Fraser became a director of the company Elf, which owned the Piper field), and his key role in trading North Sea Oil go some way to explain his inaction regarding prosecution of oil companies?
In December 1998, just 7 years after his decision not to prosecute Occidental, Lord Fraser resigned as the Tory Party’s deputy leader in the House of Lords and joined the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) as the oil futures market’s new chairman. IPE was one of the most significant markets for the trading of energy options and futures. The primary commodity traded through IPE was Brent crude, which, at the time, was the global benchmark for oil prices.
Lord Fraser’s light touch attitude to company regulation and prosecution would have made him an ideal director of Elf, the French company that bought the Piper field in the North Sea from Occidental.
In addition to his role as a trader of oil Lord Fraser was a director of 32 major companies, 12 of which were in the oil & gas or fracking sector. They were: Elf Petroleum UK Limited (1997-20010, JKX Oil & Gas PLC (1997-2011), Elf Exploration UK Limited (1997-2001), Nova Technology Management Limited (1998-2013), TheOilSite.Com PLC (2000-2004), Total E&P UK Limited (2000-2003), TheMineSite.comLimited (2000), Alkane Energy Limited (2001-2009), Fina Petroleum Development Limited (2002-2003), Fina Exploration Limited (2002-2003), Total Upstream UK Limited (2002-2003), and Total Holdings UK Limited (2003-2005).
Before and at the time of his death it was reported that Lord Fraser was actively pursuing oil-related opportunities in Kazakhstan and Ajerbaijan in conjunction with Prince Andrew.
So perhaps it is not surprising that when Lord Fraser was Lord Advocate he was not overly enthusiastic about pursuing Occidental through the courts.
In 1997 after a hearing estimated to have cost £13m in which more than 13 million words were recorded during 391 days of evidence, Lord Caplan reports.
Leaving aside the merits of the main contractor and sub contractor insurance issues that were decided by Lord Caplan in 1997, a bi-product of that commercial civil action, brought by Occidental, was that in his wisdom Lord Caplan named and blamed the two workmen who had been working on the safety valve pipework for the explosion.
Lord Caplan arrived at this judgement, he said, without having seen Lord Cullen’s findings, which stopped short of identifying a positive cause of the gas leak leading to the explosion or naming those responsible. Cullen did though allow discussion of Occidental’s Notice of Blame in evidence and that act alone gave the Notice of Blame a certain gravitas it did not deserve.
If Lord Caplan was to be believed, he was the only man in Scotland who was not aware of Lord Cullen’s findings. Again, if Lord Caplan was to be believed he was the cleverest man in Scotland as he could solve a complex, highly technical, mystery as to what happened on a massive oil and gas production platform in the North Sea from a desk in Edinburgh. A mystery to which there was no eyewitnesses testimony or physical evidence regarding the improper fitting of a blank flange which in his wisdom Lord Caplan found to be the proven cause of the disaster.
I doubt both of Lord Caplan’s assertions and believe that few with any knowledge of the oil, gas, or petrochemical industry believes that the cause of the Piper Alpha disaster was proven by Lord Caplan. I say this having employed several thousand very highly skilled and intelligent men over a 25 year period in most of the major petrochemical plants in Scotland, but I’ve never found one who was as clever as Lord Caplan claimed to be.
If Occidental got lucky with Lord Cullen and luckier still with Lord Fraser, they got luckier a third time with Lord Caplan, who in 1997 after the longest civil case in Scottish legal history found Occidental’s insurers liable to pay for the compensation of relatives. But he in effect absolved them of any direct blame for the Piper Alpha disaster. This blame he placed squarely in the hands of a dead sub-contract workman and another dead plant operator lying at the bottom of the North Sea.
I don’t underestimate the difficulty Lord Caplan would have in interpreting very complex engineering processes and equipment and how their operation or failure resulted in an accident, but if ever there was a case where Scotland’s unique Not Proven verdict was appropriate, this was it.
From Lord Caplan’s interlocutor it is obvious that he had mastered and understood the complexities of the scenarios put to him by the companies involved, but one company alone out of all the major players in the Piper Alpha disaster was absent: Score (UK) Ltd. And as a result no defence could be mounted for the actions of their employees, the men who had fitted the blank flange. And of course not represented in this insurance case, the most important parties of all were the majority of those who had witnessed the events unfold on the night, the deceased. They didn’t have a voice to put alternative scenarios to the ones favoured by the other vested interests
So unlike Lords Cullen and Fraser, Lord Caplan did find evidence as to what happened to cause the explosion and he named the culprits as Robert Vernon, 51, and Terence Sutton, 28, for the ʹʹawesome, dreadful catastropheʹʹ caused by way of ʹʹnegligence on their partʹʹ. LINK
I thought at the time that this was an outrageous judgement and the more I look into it the more outrageous it becomes.
By 2013 Lord Cullen sounded almost apologetic for his actions, or was it for his inaction regarding prosecution of Occidental?
On the 25th anniversary of the tragedy Lord Cullen broke his purdah on his Report and in an interview given to the BBC he sounded almost apologetic stating: “It was a huge challenge for me because, although I had experience of some litigation to do with the North Sea, I knew really nothing about installations and how they work, or should work.
“I was a relatively young judge, taken out of my normal work to do this but I was hugely assisted by the team which was assembled to support me,
In another 25th anniversary interview for Energy & Technology magazine he admitted being slightly overwhelmed by the extent and scope of his investigations. “What was I to investigate?” he says. “In the second part of my remit I was asked to make observations and recommendations with a view to the preservation of lives and the avoidance of similar accidents in the future. I asked myself which subjects I should investigate and how far should I pursue them?”
I would have some sympathy with Lord Cullen in his admission to being overawed with the magnitude and complexity of his task and the hard choices he had to make about which matters to investigate and which matters to leave alone.
Having said that he appears, at the very earliest stage, to have concentrated on the narrow narrative put to him by Mr Petrie of the Department of Energy. He is a judge and should have known that the limited choice of scenarios served up to him on a plate by a party with a vested interest should have been viewed with the utmost caution, if not suspicion. It is telling that Lord Cullen mentions Mr. Petrie 68 times in his final Report but never in a critical way.
Perhaps Lord Cullen is now beginning to realise that a rush to judgement to satisfy a clamour from the public for answers might have caused him to reach the wrong conclusions.
The doubts raised by many at the time of the public inquiry as to whether or not the cause of the explosion on Piper Alpha had been correctly identified have not receded; rather they have continued to resurface.
Three years after Lord Cullen had questioned the extent of his examination of events leading up to the disaster, a book was published by an engineering expert examined the Piper Alpha inquiry and confirmed, where that needed, the limited extent of the Cullen inquiry. The author, Edgar Bradley, found the failure of the inquiry to examine the many eyewitness accounts of an earlier explosion (that would have made a mockery of Petrie’s/Cullen’s findings) which were deemed “not necessary for the Cullen enquiry” as being a “very negligent oversight of the Cullen report.” LINK
The esteem in which Lord Cullen held Mr. Petrie was evident in Vol. 1 of his Report at 2.8 where he stated: “I wish to record my admiration for the amount of work which Mr Petrie’s investigation was able to achieve within 2 months of the disaster. I am sure that the Petrie Report was of considerable assistance both to the public and to potential parties in obtaining an understanding of the technical background to the events.” Cullen went on to say that this didn’t prevent others challenging Petrie’s version of events, but his failure to consider the views of those who questioned the timing of the first explosion belies this. As does the fact that witnesses such as Frank McFarlane who gave a written statement that he heard a smaller explosion 15 minutes before the main, 2200hrs one, were not called to the Public Inquiry. The Report by the admirable Petrie seems to have been paramount to Lord Cullen.
Occidental & BP both had prior identical accidents that were kept secret allowing them to push their luck, but the second time their luck ran out.
As detailed above Occidental had been, by their own admission “very lucky” that no one was killed when a massive explosion ripped through process section of the Piper Alpha in 1984 while the crew were all on a meal break in a mess hall.
The fact that the Department of Energy (DoE) let Occidental to carry out their own investigation gave them the opportunity to keep their report findings secret and of course this meant that no sanctions (their own report admitted that they could have faced prosecutions on four counts) were incurred and no preventative measures were identified or enforced.
The 1984 report that no one had seen was only released on the same day that the DoE published their interim report on the 1988 disaster.
If openness and accountability had followed the 1984 incident the almost identical incident in 1988 which cost the lives of 167 men may not have happened.
As it was there were no public reports of an investigation and consequently, no regulatory sanctions and no lessons learned. When the report into the 1984 incident was eventually seen it contained recommendations that may have saved lives had they been known to the regulating authority, Petrie’s Department of Energy.
BP had a similar experience to Occidental’s Piper Alpha one in Azerbaijan in September 2008 when workers on one of their platforms in the Caspian Sea about 60 miles east of Baku were awoken by an alarms sensors activated by high gas levels. The workers noticed gas bubbles rising in the sea around the rig so the platform was shut down and all 212 workers were evacuated immediately. The local BP manager responsible later admitted he was lucky to get everyone out alive.
With the rig out of action BP used remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs) to investigate the source of the gas bubbles and found it they were leaking from the well head, the result of a bad cement job. BP repaired this at great cost and production was eventually restarted.
This incident like Occidental’s 1984 lucky escape was kept secret from worldwide attention, but caused a diplomatic incident with the Azeri government, which only came to light in 2010 when WikiLeaks released classified US government communications on the incident. LINK
As it was, there were no public reports of an investigation and consequently, no regulatory sanctions and no lessons learned.
If openness and accountability had followed the 2008 BP incident the almost identical incident in 2010 in which cost the lives of 11 men in the Gulf of Mexico may not have happened.
In both tragedies it was the case that the UK and US government knew of a major incident, caused by deficiencies in the oil company’s procedures, which, if addressed could have prevented the loss of life that followed. However the government regulatory officials were in such a cosy relationship with the oil companies that they kept quiet lest they make a fuss which would affect the share price of the oil companies.
A short-term and short-sighted deference to self-regulation with long-term catastrophic consequences.
As with the earlier Piper Alpha ‘lucky escape’ the US government ignored the warning signs about BP, but did our American cousins deal with the aftermath of their disaster differently?
Let us compare Piper Alpha with Deepwater Horizon: The “marvellous” Mr Hammer v The horrid Mr Hayward.
It is interesting to contrast the way the American owners of the Piper Alpha were treated in the UK after an accident in which 167 men perished and unknown damage was done to the environment in the North Sea and the way the British owners of the Deepwater Horizon were treated in the USA, after an accident in which 11 men perished in the Gulf of Mexico following an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon platform on 20 April 2010 .
The UK was certainly charitable to Dr Hammer letting him off Scot-free, that is, without paying one penny in fines and without a blemish to his reputation. Thanks entirely to our Scots judiciary, which absolved his company of any actionable blame for the Piper Alpha disaster.
On the day after the blast Dr Hammer had travelled to London in his private plane then was driven to Aberdeen where he visited survivors in hospital. Shortly afterwards Margaret Thatcher did likewise and gave her gushing tribute to Dr Hammer in a speech there before dashing round to meet him at Occidental’s Aberdeen HQ where Thatcher smiled and warmly shook Hammer’s hand before retiring with him. See video below:
By stark contrast to Prime Minister Thatcher’s fawning over Occidental chief, Armand Hammer (He is a marvellous person who we have known for years and who has given money to many charities. [she said similar of Jimmy Savile]), and the respectful, almost deferential way the mainstream media treated this old friend of Prince Charles, was the way the American’s reacted to Deepwater Horizon.
President Obama stated that he would have fired BP CEO Tony Hayward if he were in charge of the company. He also supported a move to suspend the company’s quarterly dividend to shareholders. Obama also slated BP for their multi-million dollar PR offensive aimed at reducing their bad image in the USA and said he would make BP “Pay every dime they owe for the damage they’ve done”.
And a White House spokesman then also mocked BP’s top executive at a press briefing saying that he (Hayward) should cut short his English yachting holiday, bring his yacht to the Gulf, and fit an oil skimmer on it as the US needed all the help they can get to clean up BP’s pollution.
The US TV networks spat out the words British Petroleum, BP, as if they were an acronym for Bubonic Plague and ridiculed that company’s failures ad nauseam.
The US Department of Justice were just as hostile as their president and press were in their pursuit of BP and the fines and compensation to the communities affected by the pollution from Deepwater Horizon are expected to be $65bn (£47bn) in settlement of 390,000 claims under the Court Supervised Settlement Program. LINK
But more important than money, the families of the American dead were also spared the indignity of having their dearly departed sons blamed and shamed by a judge, without the benefit of a strong legal defence team. The US public wouldn’t have stood for that.
And the final comparison was that neither Armand Hammer nor anyone else from Occidental said sorry or admitted responsibility while BP’s apologies were as profuse and plentiful as their mea culpas.
The Piper Alpha compensation figure was more of a “West Coast of Ireland formula” than a “Mid-Atlantic formula”?
If one uses the figure of £600,000 as being the average compensation paid out per fatality on Piper Alpha and apply the rate of inflation given by the Bank of England the amount paid out by Occidental in 1988 would be equivalent to £1,255.000 in 2010.
In 2010 the families of those who perished on Deepwater Horizon are said to be starting at $8-9,000,000 which is equivalent to £6,933,000.
So a US family would be compensated more by a factor of four than a “mid-Atlantic” UK family.
So Occidental’s generous compensation figure was not so much a mid-Atlantic one, more like a West Coast of Ireland one.
Conclusions.
I am convinced that Scotland’s reputation as a fair and just society was damaged by the Piper Alpha tragedy. The three judges who dealt with the aftermath of the disaster all failed in their duty:
William Dougals Cullen, Lord Cullen in failing to take the bull by the horns and recommend that Occidental be prosecuted to the full extent of the court’s powers.
Peter Lovat Fraser, Lord Fraser in failing to have the wit or the will to find some grounds on which to prosecute a terrible employer with a list of previous convictions.
Philip Isaac Caplan, Lord Caplan, in conjuring up a guilty verdict where there was no material evidence, no witnesses, and no defence representation, nothing but a fanciful assertion, by vested interests, with regard to who was to blame, based on the ‘blank flange theory’.
The ‘blank flange theory’, initiated within days of the explosion by the J R Petrie report was like a baton of blame in a race to judgement that ended in Lord Caplan’s court in 1997. It was first passed on to Lord Cullen by J. R. Petrie, was then grasped by Occidental who used it to serve a Notice of Blame on the supervisor of the dead fitter Terence Sutton, then fumbled by Lord Fraser before Lord Caplan crossed the finish line with it.
An event that no one had witnessed had been refined to such a degree by so-called experts that men who had probably never used a spanner in their lives could even say how tight a dead man’s fingers had turned the nuts and bolts of a blank flange.
The three judges bought the story told by J. R. Petrie, but I never did. To me they were not three just men, rather they were just three men doing what the establishment expected of them.
POST SCRIPT 21/07/2018
Having first posted this blog privately on the 30th anniversary of the disaster I thought that it might be better if I left it for a few weeks before going public and I am glad I did as on reflection I think I may seem a bit harsh on our judges.
To explain, I am shaped by my background just as our law Lords are. For instance while Lord Cullen’s father and grandfather were members of the judiciary my father and my maternal grandfather were working class and both died of industrial causes, my father from industrial disease as a result of working on a coal-fired boiler and my grandfather as a result of a shipyard accident (a gangway giving way).
So I am aware that I am, by nature or conditioning, anti-establishment, while our judges will be pro-establishment and even my experiences as a businessman did not change me.
One of the worst experiences of my life was when I had 42 men working on a BP Grangemouth refinery on 22 March 1987 when a massive explosion shattered a hydrocracker vessel causing a huge fire. LINK
I was awoken by the blast at my home 11 miles away in Dunfermline and the 30 minute journey travelling to that site, as I watched the flames soaring hundreds of feet into the air not knowing if my men (who included my brother) were safe or not was one of my worst experiences.
Sadly one man was killed in the explosion, which was so powerful that debris weighing several tonnes was propelled up to a kilometre away from the refinery site. Radioactive isotopes that were in the hydrocracker vessel were never recovered.
Thankfully all my men were safe, but I know that the pipework they were replacing was in places so thin that one could poke a pencil through it and I also know that refinery staff and H & S officials would reassure anyone who asked about how safe and regularly inspected the plant was, prior to it blowing up.
In essence my scepticism towards officials like J. R. Petrie would be the polar opposite to that of Lord Cullen who was so effusive in his thanks for their help.
UPDATE 05/10/2018
Since publication Lord Cullen’s report into the Piper Alpha disaster was only available from HMSO on payment of £70 which the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) found unfair so they wrote to the government and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) in the week before the July 6th (30th) anniversary asking for the report to be made free of charge.
HSE responded by making the document free to the public, with PDFs available online.
I have made it available here: Volume One: LINK & here: Volume Two: LINK
