Piper Alpha Oil Rig before Accident
Piper Alpha was an offshore oil and gas platform that suffered an explosion in July 1988, which is still regarded as the worst offshore oil disaster in the history of the UK..The accident killed 165 out of 226 crew members and two crew from the standby vessel Sandhaven. The accident was attributed mainly to human error and forced the offshore industry to pay more attention to safety issues. Property damage from the Piper Alpha explosion was estimated to be a staggering $1.4bn. Owned by Occidental Petroleum, Piper Alpha began production in 1976 at the Piper oil field, which is owned by the OPCAL joint venture (JV). It was initially constructed as an oil production platform and later added with a gas recovery module to facilitate gas production. Piper oil field produced oil from 36 wells.
Piper Alpha Platform was constructed in two sections by McDermott Engineering and UIE at Ardersier and Cherbourg, respectively. The two sections were assembled at Ardersier. The gas processing system of the platform comprised two high-pressure condensate pumps. The modular platform was approximately 300m-high and comprised four main operating areas, which were separated by firewalls. The platform was equipped with both diesel and electric seawater pumps to supply water to its automatic fire-fighting system. It had a capacity to accommodate more than 200 people and featured a helideck. The height of the helideck from the water was approximately 175ft.
The Piper Alpha offshore platform. Picture: PA
Piper Alpha Oil Rig
The platform was placed at the Piper oil field, 273km north-east of Aberdeen. The offshore oil and gas platform pumped processed crude oil from the oil field to Flotta Terminal, located on the Island of Orkney. The export oil lines from the new Tartan and Claymore platforms were also connected with Piper’s oil export line to the Flotta Terminal. The platform later served as a hub that processed its own gas, collected gas from the Tartan Platform and pumped it onto the MCP-01 Platform. Piper Alpha was linked with Claymore via a pipeline, which received and supplied gas to the latter for gas-lift purposes.
Gas and Crude Oil Distribution Diagram..
Claymore Alpha
What caused Piper Alpha disaster?
The primary cause of the accident was ruled to be maintenance work simultaneously carried out on one of the high-pressure condensate pumps and a safety valve, which led to a leak in condensates. After the removal of one of the gas condensate pump pressure safety valves for maintenance, the condensate pipe remained temporarily sealed with a blind flange as the work was not completed during the day shift. Unaware of the maintenance being carried out on one of the pumps, a night crew turned on the alternate pump. Following this, the blind flange, including firewalls, failed to handle the pressure, leading to several explosions.
The Claymore complex is located in block 14/19n of the United Kingdom Continental Shelf located 161 km north east of Aberdeen in the Central North Sea. Located at co-ordinates 58°26’58” N, 00°15’13” W, it stands in approximately 110m of water. The Claymore complex contains two fixed steel bridge-linked platforms, the Claymore Production Platform (CPP) and Claymore Accommodation Platform (CAP). The CPP, weighing approximately 36,000 tonnes, sits on a conventional eight-legged steel jacket and provides process and drilling facilities. The CAP is much smaller at around 8,000 tonnes, and provides accommodation and utilities for staff, and the helideck. The platforms are linked by 106m bridge. Design work on the platform started in 1974 after the field was discovered in May of that year. The Claymore Production Platform was installed in 1976 with first production from the Claymore field commencing in November 1977 and the Claymore Accommodation Platform was installed in 1995. The Scapa field was developed as a subsea tie-back to the Claymore platform in 1982. Claymore provides an up and over transportation service to the Golden Eagle. Hydrocarbons from the Golden Eagle Area are transported via a 14” oil export pipeline from Golden Eagle and delivered to the Claymore Pipeline which provides transportation services for the Golden Eagle Group in respect of the Golden Eagle Pipeline Liquids. Oil export from Golden Eagle commenced 1st November 2014.
The fire at the platform intensified due to a failure in closing the flow of gas from the Tartan platform. The automatic fire-fighting system remained deactivated since divers worked underwater before the incident. Helicopter operations were hampered due to the amount of heat and smoke.
Tartan Platform North Sea 1993
Cullen inquiry into the platform explosion and recommendations
Following the tragedy, an inquiry into the accident began in November 1988, headed by Lord Cullen, and was published in November 1990. The inquiry was conducted in two parts. The first part studied the causes of the tragedy and the second part presented recommendations to avert future occurrences. It presented 106 recommendations for changes to North Sea safety procedures.
The inquiry introduced major changes in the offshore industry with regards to safety management, regulation and training. Responsibility for North Sea safety shifted from the Department of Energy to the Health and Safety Executive. Automatic shut-down valves were made mandatory on rigs to starve any potential fires of fuel.
The investigation into the Piper Alpha disaster has much to teach us thirty four years on. Most of the physical evidence sank to the bottom of the North Sea, so the testimony of survivors and witnesses had to be woven together into a coherent story. The Cullen inquiry uncovered not only what probably happened on the terrible night of 06 July 1988, but also the complex path leading up to it, the early warnings and missed opportunities that might have prevented a tragedy in which 167 people lost their lives.
The Piper Alpha Oil Rig has been decimated after a series of powerful explosions.. 167 Workers perished in the flames..
Although compliant with UK gas conservation policy, the modifications to Piper Alpha broke from the safe design concept that separated hazardous and sensitive areas of the platforms. A hazardous Gas Compression Module (GCM) was installed next to the platform control room. This new “Phase 2” operating mode, with the active GCM, was maintained as the normal operating state until 1980. Throughout the late 1980s, major maintenance projects were underway, including a change-out of the GCM. Occidental decided to operate in Phase 1 mode during this work instead of halting production entirely (as originally planned), claiming that established procedures would be adequate during renovation. Piper Alpha continued to export just under 120,000 barrels of oil and approximately 33 million standard cubic feet of gas per day.
On July 6, a worker performing routine maintenance removed the pressure safety valve (used to regulate pressure in case of an overpressure) from Pump A—one of two Piper Alpha condensate pumps that moved condensate down the pipeline to the coast. Beyond the routine maintenance, a 2-week long overhaul had been pending for Pump A, but the overhaul had not yet begun. The worker used a blind flange (round metal plate) to seal off the open pipe. Since the maintenance could not be completed before the 6 p.m. shift change, the worker left the hand-tightened flange in place, opting to complete a permit stating that Pump A was not ready for operation and must not be activated.
The accommodation block is raised from the sea bed after it sank Credit: REX FEATURES
At 9:45 p.m., the second shift was faced with a hydrate (icelike, crystalline structures of water and gas molecules that form under certain pressure and temperature conditions) buildup that blocked the gas compression system. The blockage resulted in failure of Pump B, which would halt all offshore production on the Piper Oilfield unless it (or Pump A) could be restarted. Workers combed through maintenance records to see if Pump A was clear for activation.
Many of the casualties were located in the accommodation block which came away from the main platform in a blast
Although the permit for the overhaul was found, the permit pertaining to the routine maintenance and missing safety valve was not: the worker who removed the safety valve placed that permit in a box near the valve, as the location-based permit system had outlined. Additionally, the missing valve-cum-blind flange was located behind other equipment several feet above the rig’s deck, making visual identification of the safety issue highly improbable. Workers, believing Pump A to be safe for use, activated it at 9:55 p.m. The high-pressure gas leaking through the hand-tightened, failing blind flange whistled and triggered six alarms before igniting and exploding moments later. Firewalls
designed to withstand burning oil, crumbled under the overpressure from the detonating gas. The emergency stop system was activated and incoming oil and gas sea lines were sealed. Under Piper Alpha’s original oil production design, the emergency action would have isolated the individual units on
the platform and contained the fire, but fire spread through broken firewalls to the damaged separation module (where gas
and water were separated from harvested oil), igniting a small condensate pipe that was ruptured by the initial explosion.
Occidental issued no orders to either Tartan or Claymore to shut down and operators believed they did not have authority to stop export from Piper Alpha.
At 10:04 p.m., platform workers evacuated the control room, leaving the platform with no way to manage the disaster. From the control room, firefighting systems were placed under manual control that evening according to procedure established by the rig manager. That deactivated automatic firefighting water pumps when divers were working in the water, as they had been earlier that day. No platform-wide emergency communications or evacuation orders were given. The crew, unable to approach the lifeboat stations because of the flames, gathered in the fireproof living quarters and waited for instructions.
Tartan and Claymore’s continued production forced continuous fuel into the blaze, preventing the fire from burning out. Smoke filled the living quarters. Numerous valiant but unsuccessful attempts to reach the water pumping machinery were made. At 10:20 p.m., Tartan’s gas line burst—feeding 16.5 to 33 tons of gas per second into Piper Alpha, which ignited immediately.
Piper Alpha burns ferociously after Tartans gas line bursts....
Helicopter rescue was impossible because of the wind, smoke, and flames. Rig personnel began jumping from various levels of the 175-foot platform. The Tharos, a firefighting vessel, attempted to draw alongside Piper Alpha and fight the inferno at 10:30 p.m., but was restricted because its water cannons possessed enough pressure to kill platform workers if hit directly. Twenty minutes later, the Tharos had to leave the platform after the second gas line from MCP-01 ruptured, feeding more gas into the fire. The flame jets reached hundreds of feet into the air and temperatures rose so high that areas of the steel rig and portions of the Tharos began melting. The explosion killed two rescue crewmen and six Piper Alpha survivors who jumped to into the sea. Remaining crew were left trapped in the blazing crew quarters. Claymore shut down after this second major explosion; Tartan platform management was given orders not to stop production, given the consequential cost to Occidental.
A rescue helicopter flies over the smouldering wreck of Piper Alpha, all that remains of the huge Occidental Oil rig which turned into a "raging inferno" when an explosion ripped through the offshore platform.
At 11:20 p.m., the scorched and melting utilities module and crew quarters slid into the sea. The rest of the platform followed piece by piece until 12:45 a.m., July 7. The oil wells module was the only remaining section left above the waves. Of the 226 platform personnel, 61 survived. 167 Piper Alpha crewmen and rescue personnel were lost.
Defeated Design Piper Alpha’s inadequate permit and lockout/tagout system resulted in gaps in multiple levels of safety. While second shift engineers earnestly believed that all documents were accounted for before beginning Pump A start-up, a decentralized system inhibited the sharing of critical information. A lack of informal “between shift” talks compounded lax communication issues. The reliance on individual safety practices in lieu of a strong system safety culture allowed errors to find holes in the layers of controls.
No backup procedures existed in case of loss of the platform control room and organization disintegrated. The Piper Alpha refit performed in the 1980s was not paralleled with revised safety measures, even while the expansion into gas production defeated firewalls made to oil fire specification.
It took special crews three weeks to bring the flames on the burning platform under control
Negligent Culture Although Piper Alpha was equipped with automated firefighting equipment, a procedure established by platform management had deactivated automation of the system when divers were working in the water, thus preventing them from being ingested through automated water pump caged intakes. It was customary for divers to work up to 12 hours a day during summer months in the North Sea, but divers did not see significant risk unless they were working closer than 10 to15 feet from any of the intakes. Earlier audit recommendations suggested that pumps remain in automatic mode if divers were not working in the vicinity of the intakes, but this recommendation was never implemented. Multiple 16- and 18-inch-diameter gas pipelines were connected to Piper Alpha. The length and diameter of these pipelines fell under scrutiny of a study performed 2 years earlier by Occidental management. The study warned that it would take several hours to reduce the pipelines’ pressure in an emergency, and that it would not be possible to fight a fire while fuel was forced though them. Management admitted that the devastation of the pipelines would end in disaster, but Claymore and Tartan production was not halted with the first emergency call during the Piper Alpha fire.
Because of damages costing almost $3.4 billion, the Piper Alpha disaster was the largest man-made disaster at the time and continues to be the worst offshore oil disaster in terms of life lost and industry impact. Although the Cullen Inquiry found Occidental guilty of inadequate maintenance and safety procedures, no criminal charges were brought against the company. The Piper Alpha disaster, one of the earlier offshore platform disasters, continues to serve as an industry example of what happens when production, schedule, and cost come before investments in comprehensive system safety.
Billy Clayton from Gosforth, who survived the Piper Alpha disaster 34 years ago (Image: Newcastle Chronicle)
When Billy Clayton woke up, he was floating on his back in the North Sea and the Piper Alpha was burning above him. He had cheated death and, 34 years on from the disaster which claimed 167 lives, he remembers everything - right up to the moment all other options had failed him and a 170ft jump into the waves was all that was left. Now 74 years old, Billy has shared his story in order to reinforce one message: keep workers safe. Life offshore wasn’t originally Billy’s plan. A scaffolder by trade, the work ran out after he was blacklisted for going on strike. After spells abroad and down south, he gravitated towards the North Sea’s offshore sites at a time when business in big oil was booming and there were plenty of jobs. Some rigs he knew like the back of his hand - but the Piper Alpha wasn’t one of them. “I had only done one trip for a couple of weeks on the Piper Alpha prior to the accident, it wasn’t a rig I knew well,” said Billy, who lives in Gosforth Newcastle.
“After it happened, my wife reminded me the first time I came back from there I had said to her, ‘I don’t know what it is but there’s something I don’t like about that rig’. “The only reason I went back is there was a delay to another North Sea job I was waiting for so I took a couple of weeks on the Piper Alpha to fill in the gap.” It wasn’t ideal but it was decent money so Billy shipped off for the Piper oilfield, roughly equidistant between Aberdeen and Norway. On July 6, 1988, a trip father-of-three Billy never wanted to take turned into one he’d never be able to forget. He said: “When the accident happened I’d only been on the rig for a couple of days and was just getting on with the work as normal. “On the night itself I was off shift and sat watching ‘Caddyshack’ when a young lad from Edinburgh called John Scott I knew a bit from a previous job walked in. “He’d only been on the rig for a couple of hours, I told him we’d get a cup of tea and have a good chat after the film. “Then there was a bang, the ceiling tiles started coming down and alarms started going off. “I told him to go back to his cabin and get his life jacket like we were trained to do.
“That was the last time I saw him. They never found his body.”
As a survivor, Billy received letters from the families of those who were never recovered looking for confirmation their loved ones were on the rig or clinging to some faint hope they weren’t.
“I wrote back to every letter but I was no help, I was a stranger on the rig and didn’t know anyone.
“But I did know John Scott - I travelled to Edinburgh to tell [John’s partner] face-to-face he definitely got on the rig, she couldn’t accept it until then.”
With corridors blocked off by flames, Billy and a group of people headed for the canteen at the top of the rig near the helideck.
They couldn’t get to the boats but after a couple of people in breathing apparatus knocked on the window and gave them a thumbs up, they felt relatively secure in the room.
But the men in the breathing apparatus didn’t come back and the smoke was creeping in - by the end, they were on the ground, trying to avoid the thick fumes.
Billy said: “A few of us decided we couldn’t wait any longer and got out. I remember looking around us and everything around us, even the cranes, were burning and the helideck was the only option.
“Seven or eight of us went up there and I can remember waving down to the people below and they were waving back up but we couldn’t do anything for each other.
“I was looking down when there was another fireball below us. I fell back and everybody went different ways.
“There were two men holding on to each other running out of the smoke and I saw another guy in a white t-shirt just staring ahead.
“I told him he had to move but he just kept staring, completely still.
“One other person jumped and survived that I know of but I have no idea what happened to anyone else.”
Standing at the edge of the helipad while flames ripped through the rig below him, Billy found a gap he could jump through between an exhaust system and a life boat.
He pulled his inflated life jacket away from his head, looked at the horizon to keep straight and stepped off.
The fire in full blaze. Imagine the heat that was generated.
Billy said: “The last thing I remember is the orange blur of the lifeboat going past me.
“Then I woke up, floating face-up in the water with this huge burning orange fire above me.
“I knew I had to get away so just kept swimming as much as I could until I found someone else floating in the water.
“I grabbed on to him, chatting away, looking for help.
“We found a boat and I helped them haul in the guy I’d been floating with. It was only then I realised he was dead. It hadn’t dawned on me at all.”
Billy sustained a broken leg, cracked ribs and burns during his death-defying escape but became one of the 61 workers who survived.
To this day, he doesn’t know how he got off the rig alive.
He said: “I was just very, very lucky. The man upstairs must have been watching and that night it just wasn’t my turn.
“I don’t know what I did right but I know there was a lot of luck involved.”
After years of inner anguish and fruitless trips to psychiatrists, Billy now has the strength to talk about what he saw.
The Piper Alpha Platform Smoulders..
The Remains of Piper Alpha smoulders in the distance..
It’s still not easy - a documentary he was recently featured in and includes footage of the burning rig has been unopened in a cabinet for weeks - but he feels obliged to share his story to remind people what goes wrong when the safety of workers isn’t taken seriously enough.
He said: “I’m not angry, there’s no use. The only thing I worry about is safety on the rigs now.
“At the end of the day, it all comes down to money and the companies involved with Piper Alpha lost massive amounts of it that day.
“I don’t think they want that to happen again and so I think they probably are doing what they can to keep workers safe but it’s not something we can take for granted.”
Piper Alpha survivor Joe Meanen
Joe Meanen jumped 175ft from the burning Piper Alpha rigs helipad platform and miracoulsly survived.. Joe Meaden who is from Glasgow and originally a scaffolder by trade was a mere 29 years old when he took two daunting steps over the safety netting and plummeted 175 feet down into the deep north sea's water.. Joe did not know if he was going to die but had no choice as the incredible flames smoke and panic quickly crept up to him.. Joe said: “I just did it without thinking. It was only after I jumped that I thought, ‘Oh f***’.” Alongside others, who tragically didn’t make it, Joe was waiting for an air evacuation that never came, despite tannoy assurances. As the blaze raged, it was too late to descend from the galley where men huddled waiting for helicopters. He became one of the few left with the stark choice – stay and fry or jump and try.
Joe Meanen recalls his harrowing experience on the doomed Piper Alpha Oil Platform..
On the fateful night of July 6th, 1988, Joe waited as others descended to sea level as fires and explosions caused by a gas leak sealed Piper Alpha’s fate. Joe said: “What you were trained to do was stay. You were always told your first method of evacuation would be by helicopter. “It was more the other boys who went against advice who got off. “We hadn’t been outside and didn’t realise how bad it was. “As it happened, there wouldn’t have been any chance of helicopters landing. “But they were still telling us they were on their way. I think they’d just lost it. “It wasn’t so much panic – it was their training and they were overwhelmed.” Events like the Twin Towers terror attack in New York and the Grenfell disaster haunt Joe. He pondered: “Can you imagine folk at Grenfell and 9/11 throwing themselves out? What possesses them to do that – desperation?”
Billowing black smoke enveloping the accommodation block and helideck on The Piper Alpha (Image: Crown Copyright)
“We were just lucky we got outside when we did and decided to jump. “There was a crowd of us at the back door to the galley. There was about 14 and maybe eight or 10 of us left. “There were four or five boys who decided to stay.” After the first of the major explosions, Joe started climbing up a radio mast but slipped. He said: “It was just panic. I was going up and I slipped and I thought, ‘That’s me, I’m dead here’. “Something seemed to flick a switch. I remember everything I did from there. “But it was as if something was pushing me so much to do that. “There was certainly something that made me do it.” He decided to jump. Joe said: “I had tracksuit bottoms on and a polo shirt and trainers but they were soaking wet from the spray.
“That probably helped plus I had a decent head of hair then which was soaking as well. “I ran over and had a look and saw water. I took my lifejacket off. There was safety netting around the helideck so I just stepped on the inside one, then the outside one and pushed myself away.” Looking back, he said: “I might never have done it. Thinking rationally, was it a will to survive or some out-of-body thing? “I hit the water at 60-70mph. I think I got my burns on the way just with the heat radiation. “I grabbed part of a lifeboat and the lifejacket I’d thrown in. “It was almost a flat calm and the way the water was running from south to north took me away from the platform. “There were a lot of circumstances that worked for me instead of against.But you can’t analyse these things because you can’t work it out. “As far as I’m concerned you’ve just got to accept it because if you don’t, I think that’s where the survivor’s guilt comes in. “I felt I got a second chance, and you can’t let what happened take over your life – you’ve got to live.” Joe gets frustrated seeing the same mistakes repeated in disasters – and no one ever brought to book. He said: “Look at the Grenfell Tower tragedy. It’s those who got out early and didn’t listen to what they were told who survived.”
The memorial to the men killed in the Piper Alpha disaster on 6 July 1988 is found in the Queen Mother's Rose Garden in Hazlehead Park and was unveiled by her in 1991.
On the night of the blaze, many residents were told to remain in their flats by emergency services.
But they became trapped as the flames raged out of control and thick poisonous smoke spread up the single narrow stairwell. The inquiry the policy “substantially failed” less than 30 minutes after the first firefighters were on scene. Some people ignored the advice and made it down the stairs to safety but 72 people died.
Joe said: “I don’t know if anyone’s ever spent time in jail after being found guilty for gross negligence. Especially in the North Sea where there are big money contracts – there needs to be somebody that’s responsible. “It annoys me that at Grenfell, it’s likely no one will face charges because there are so many get-outs. “There must be solicitors and legal firms making up the contracts to say, ‘Well, just in case anything does happen, we’ll make it that complicated that nobody’s going to be held responsible’. “I once asked our QC if anyone would be held responsible for Piper Alpha and taken to court and it went right over his head. There should be someone held accountable. It’s all to do with money, isn’t it?” The Cullen Inquiry in the wake of Piper Alpha brought about a change of attitude offshore with new, safer working practices. Joe said: “But only for the North Sea. A few weeks ago we heard there had been a few ‘close calls’ recently with gas escapes. It’s amazing how ‘close calls’ seem to happen when there’s a downturn in the oil prices. “They turn a wee blind eye to the safety aspect of things. “If you went through the history books, every time there’s been downturns, low oil prices, people paid off, valuable experience lost, there seems to be a spike in ‘close misses’.
The Lord Cullen Inquiry in the wake of Piper Alpha brought about a change of attitude offshore with new, safer working practices (Image: PA)
“It’s like politicians. They turn round and tell you a bare-faced lie – that ‘safety’s the most important, it’s paramount’. Or as survivor Geoff Bollands said, ‘Safety always came first as long as it didn’t interrupt production’.”
Joe, 59 when this article was published attended a special service at the Piper Alpha Memorial Garden in Aberdeen, where the names of the dead were read out.
The married father of two often makes his own quiet pilgrimage to the memorial statue in Hazlehead Park.
He said: “I think it’s important. I was up at the memorial the other day and there’s a lot of people who never got to 30.
“Their ages are inscribed alongside their names. They never even made it to 30 and here we are, 30 years on.
“That’s a huge thing for me. How they’ve missed out and how their families have missed out – their kids, brothers and sisters.”
Immediately following the catastrophe – the worst ever in the industry – oil workers and union activists inundated the press in Scotland with horror stories about the lack of safety.
The OILC trade union (Offshore Industry Liaison Committee) was set up as a direct result of Piper Alpha and the death of another worker a few weeks later on the Ocean Odyssey platform. The OILC is now part of the RMT trade union with around 2,500 members.
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Incredibly two neighbouring platforms continued to pump oil to Piper Alpha after the first explosion occurred. It was only after the second explosion that the order was given to stop.
The owners, Occidental, did not issue instructions to stop the flow of oil because of the costs involved.
Royal Air Force Air Load Master Bob Pountney helping a survivor as he arrives at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary after the explosion disaster on the North Sea oil production platform Piper Alpha.
Not surprisingly 70% of the survivors have suffered or are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.
In the years preceding Piper Alpha the number of incidents in the North Sea had escalated dramatically.
The number of serious incidents jumped from 44 in 1984 to 85 in 1985 and 72 in 1986”. The Piper Alpha explosion had been the third in a week in the North Sea sector.
Occidental had turned down safety requests by workers following an explosion on the Piper in 1984. These included suggestions to relocate the accommodation units away from the most dangerous parts of the platform and to rebuild the units which were made from wood and fibreglass with steel and more resistant materials.
Occidental was challenged over two high-pressure gas lines running from neighbouring platforms that were a potential danger.
The Occidental safety manager accepted that the accommodation units in no way met safety standards. Yet they refused to consider the proposals from workers.
It would have meant shutting off production for six weeks costing millions of pounds in lost profits.
Moreover, the Thatcher-led Tory government did not publish the safety report. The interests of British capitalism and their disregard for workers’ safety meant the oil and gas must continue to flow without disruption.
The Tory energy minister, Cecil Parkinson, claimed: “safety is the first priority for the government and the operators.” But the Department of Energy, responsible for maximising production and therefore government revenue, was in charge of safety in the oil industry.
At that time the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) had no role or jurisdiction in the North Sea. The oil companies were lobbying furiously for safety to be handled by the government.
“Many workers did not even have the choice to jump into the sea. They were trapped by the fire in their beds or in the recreation rooms of the maze of stairs and corridors in the accommodation area. In total darkness as the electricity failed, the windows began shattering in the intense heat and the oxygen was burned from the air.”
The North Sea oil and gas industry is one of the most profitable in the world.
An estimated £300 billion in corporation tax revenue (at today’s prices) has flowed to the UK government since oil and gas began to be extracted from the North Sea and surrounding areas in 1975.
For the oil and gas multinationals who dominate the extraction process that figure is closer to £1 trillion.
Moreover, it is estimated that around as much again remains under the North Sea, West Shetland and the Atlantic waters.
North sea rigs, including the replacement for Piper Alpha, have been reported routinely leaking oil and other chemicals into the sea.
Red Adair (bottom), Brian Krause (middle) and Raymond Henry helped fight the flames.
As Expressed by the Socialist Party Scotland The entire industry should be taken into public ownership. It should be run and managed democratically by representatives of workers and the working class as a whole.
By taking these steps it would be possible to put safety and the environment first.
Under public ownership the resources from the oil and gas sector could be invested in jobs, public services, decent incomes and research into alternative energy sources, rather than lining the pockets of the big corporations.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher also visited casualties in several wards and pledged £1m to the disaster relief fund on the day that a full public inquiry into the tragedy was announced. Diana Princess of Wales was pictured at the bedside of survivor Michael Bradley during a tour of the hospital with Prince Charles.
Sandy McCook's photo of Princess Diana at the bedside of survivor Michael Bradley at ARI.
Princess Diana visits survivors of Piper Alpha Explosion
Princess Diana visits survivors of Piper Alpha Explosion
One of the only 61 survivors is taken ashore on a stretcherCredit: PA:PRESS ASSOCIATION
Stained Glass artist Shona McInnes won the coveted 'Saltire' award for this stained glass window in St Nicholas Kirk, Aberdeen, featuring the North Sea Oil Industry and its links with Aberdeen. on 21st July 1988, a remembrance service at St Nicholas Kirk in Aberdeen was held. Around 2,000 people gathered inside with around the same number again lining the surrounding streets.
Dr Armand Hammer, (left) the chairman of the firm that operated the platform visited casualties at an Aberdeen hospital following the blast
Piper Alpha Window at St Nicholas Kirk, Aberdeen.
The operation to extinguish the raging fire took several weeks and a lot of water..
A bandaged survivor is helped after arriving at Aberdeen Royal InfirmaryCredit: PA:Press Association
"It was eerily quiet for something that big. A lot of screeching and twisting of metal still going on which made you wonder, when is it going over? And literarily the only thing that kept it standing up was the 36 wells themselves. The structure was pretty much destroyed." It eventually took 36 days to put out..
By pure chance the firefighting rig Tharos was sitting next to Piper Alpha on the night it exploded.
It was pumping 40,000 gallons of water every minute onto the burning platform.
Legendary oil well firefighter Paul "Red" Adair.in Kuwait
Workers panic as they witness a huge explosion aboard the Massive 38000 ton Piper Alpha Oil and Raw Gas platform..
The image above shows Red Adiar's watch with the special oil well fire graphic.
Explosion in the North Sea (Piper Alpha)
Piper Alpha: Survivors in Hospital
IN 1988, Geoff Bollands escaped the Piper Alpha fireball with seconds to spare.
It was the end of his career in the oil industry and for 25 years he never went near a platform again. The demons were too strong.
The former offshore worker often replays the time between the first alarm lighting up on the control panel on Piper Alpha on 6 July, 1988, to the moment he walked through the front door of his home – bandaged, broken and changed – to reunite with his wife the next day.
Geoff Bollands is a survivor from the Piper Alpha disaster..
“I can remember those hours, those minutes like they were yesterday,” says Bollands, now 70. There is much, however, that Bollands can’t remember in the aftermath of the Piper Alpha disaster, such as the time he physically dragged his wife out of B&Q because a tannoy announcement triggered a deep panic within him. He also didn’t know about the hate mail that was sent to his home and the advice given to his children not to accept packages at the door. Once a stranger turned up to hand-deliver a letter asking why he deserved to live.
Neither can he recall when a devastated mother turned on him at a memorial service in Aberdeen in sheer despair that Bollands had survived while her son had not.
“There are things that I am only learning about now, things that I had no idea happened,” Bollands adds.
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Geoff Bollands working in the control room of Piper Alpha before the disaster.
It was his wife Christine who quietly held on to these upsetting experiences for the best part of three decades as she tried to hold together family life in the long, painful recovery that followed the tragedy. She almost certainly won’t be alone. Bollands suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the aftermath of the Piper Alpha disaster that killed 167 men.. For a long time he was unaware that he was suffering from the condition or the pain he was causing his family as he struggled to cope with what happened during those 24 hours.
His daughter Rachel, who was 15 at the time of Piper Alpha, recalls in Bollands’ new book that her father was always in the house but never really there. Always wandering from room to room, staring out the windows, she remembers. Bollands had worked for eight years on Piper Alpha by the time of the disaster and recalls in his book the camaraderie, the good offshore food and the good money a career in the North Sea afforded. But the dark times take over the pages. It was on his first stint offshore in 1978 that his son Daniel suddenly died on Christmas Day, aged just four, after developing pneumonia. Ten years later, Piper Alpha delivered more devastation.
Geoff Bollands and his wife, Christine, also with their wider family.
Bollands recalled that his shift on the night of the disaster started with calm seas and a lighthearted mood, with many of the workers getting ready to leave the platform for leave the following day. For those who had finished their shift, the Chevy Chase comedy Caddyshack was playing in the lounge. For those starting the late turn, the last paperwork of the rotation was being completed. Bollands went to phone his wife, as was the norm, with his colleague then later leaving the control room to do the same.Five minutes later the sequence of events which led to the Piper Alpha disaster began. Bollands was on his own.
Bollands adds: “It took just 35 minutes, from the first alarm coming into the control room up until the second explosion, the giant fireball that engulfed the platform and was the point of no return.”
Within minutes of the first alarm going off, the fire and gas panel “went ballistic” with the lights coming on ‘like a Christmas tree’.
He said it was with “mounting horror” that he realised that there was a massive gas leak in C module of the platform.
The first explosion occurred at 10pm, with Bollands thrown 15 feet across the control room, injuring his hip. Smoke started to fill the room but he managed to reach out and hit the large red emergency shutdown button before heading out onto the platform. By this time, a large oil fire was raging with the wind blowing the flames back onto the platform.Two of his colleagues, Bob Vernon and Robbie Carroll, followed control room procedure and put on breathing apparatus in order to start manually the emergency fire water pump, which lay the other side of the smoke. Bollands, suffering a hip injury caused by the first explosion, was unable to follow. It was the last time he saw his friends alive. “Seeing the two of them disappear into the smoke is a memory that is etched on my mind. It could – should – have been me but my minor injuries saved my life.,” he writes in Baptism of Fire. As small explosions broke out across the platform and the workers became surrounded by smoke and flames, the only way was down into the water with Bollands grabbing a rope to descend around 90ft with his colleagues, the men sitting on each other’s heads as they tried to lower themselves to safety.
They were on the Silver Pit rescue craft when the second large explosion engulfed the platform in a massive fireball which served death on dozens of men. The bodies of 87 workers were found trapped in the accommodation block which later fell into the North Sea. Bollands recalled horrific scenes of burning men jumping off the 90ft platform with other accounts noting how flaming oil floated on top of the North Sea as men tried to jump to safety. Some men leapt from the heliport which towers almost 180ft above sea level. Others found themselves trapped underwater by burning bits of debris.
Bollands spent more than three and a half years off work following Piper Alpha and eventually decided to return back offshore.
The night before his departure for the rig, he was deeply troubled by what lay ahead.
“My wife gave me the best advice she ever has that night. She told me she’d had enough and that I should go to sleep, get up in the morning, phone my boss and resign, close the book on the disaster, and get on with my life.”
He was able to make the call and leave his job but the return to a sense of normality took longer. Now a financial adviser, he says he feels blessed to have had 30 years of life since the night so many men perished.
“It wasn’t up to me that I recovered – but I am just grateful that I did.”
Baptism of Fire is published by Troubador and is available now. When the first explosion happened, Mr Bollands was thrown across the control room and hurt his hip.
According to Mr Bollands, there were three key reasons for Piper, which remains the world's worst offshore disaster: the original gas leak, insufficient record keeping, and a failure of shift handovers. "If we'd managed to get any one of those right, the disaster wouldn't have happened," he said.
The longer-term lesson, he said, is awareness – never relax, never think it won't happen again. "The oil industry can never be completely safe," he said, "so you can't afford to be complacent for one minute."
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Smouldering remains of the platform where 167 oil workers died (Image: Press Association)
Roy Thomson and Mike Jennings (Image: Nothpix)
Mike – who was amazed to find he had been living just 25 miles from Roy for the past 22 years – said “It’s nice to meet Roy.
“It’s laid a few ghosts for him and it’s done the same for me. It’s nice to get it all sorted and put a face to the story.”
A HAUNTED Piper Alpha survivor came face-to-face with the man he thought he had pushed to his death on the doomed platform.
On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the world’s worst offshore disaster, the Daily Record brought Roy Thomson and Mike Jennings together.
And for Roy, it brought an end to a quarter of a century of doubts and fears.
He said: “I can finally put my mind at rest. It’s a relief to put a face to the story and meet Mike.”
As Piper Alpha burned, and with smoke and flames all around him, Roy had bumped into someone in the chaos, knocking him off the rig.
He didn’t know who the man was but he has lived with the horror that he might have killed him ever since.
The man has now been identified as Mike – and it turns out that Roy actually saved his life.
If he had stayed on the rig just seconds longer, he would have been engulfed in flames.
With his boots on fire from the heat of the platform, Roy had been desperately trying to flee the inferno when he ran into the back of Mike and sent him spinning 120ft over the side.
At the time, Mike, too, had been peering over the edge and trying to work out if jumping was his best chance of surviving.
He heard a man running up behind him, screaming that his feet were on fire – and the decision was taken away from him in a split second.
Before he could step aside, Mike was propelled off the platform. He fell sideways, hitting a girder before spinning on into the water.
Survivors of Piper Alpha are reunited at last..
When he resurfaced, he grabbed a piece of wood and, using a training shoe as an oar, paddled away from Piper.
Like Roy, he was picked up by standby vessel The Silver Pit.
Roy got a clue about Mike’s identity when he read Fire in the Night, a book about the Piper Alpha disaster.
He said: “There’s a passage in a book where it says a guy came out of the smoke screaming that he was on fire and pushed Mike Jennings off. I went to see the premiere of the film of the book last week and Mike Jennings is in it. That’s when I finally thought, maybe he’s the one.
“I jumped at the same time and I held on to a guy in the water for a while, thinking it was the man I’d pushed off.
“He was the only person close to me when I came back to the surface – but I was clutching a dead body.
“I said to my father, ‘I actually think I killed somebody that night’.
“I’ve thought that for a long while. I’d pushed him off and when I came to the surface, there was nobody around me that was still alive.
Standby vessel SILVER PIT in Aberdeen harbour
“I just took it that the body I was next to was the guy I pushed off. I never saw his face because I pushed him from behind.”
Mike, of Findhorn, Moray, said: “I was standing on the edge, about to jump off. I was preparing myself.
“I was on the pipe deck about 120ft up. I was putting one arm across my lifejacket to stop it riding up and putting a hand over my nose to stop water going up my nose.
“Next thing, someone was coming up, saying his feet were burning. That was it, I was gone.
“I don’t remember the fall or entering the water.
“I remember coming to the surface and looking around and thinking, ‘Thank God I’m away’.
“I have the Fire in the Night book, but like the newspaper clippings from the time, I haven’t read them.”
Ex-RAF man Mike, who organised the helicopter shuttles on Piper, had arrived on the platform the day before the disaster.
He was in the cinema when the first explosion rocked the installation.
The screen collapsed and the power went off.
Mike tried to make his way to the radio room but red-hot doors thwarted his passage. It quickly became apparent that it was every man for himself.
The Piper Alpha Memorial at Hazlehead Park, Aberdeen.
Mike, 72, said: “The blame lay at several doors.
“At the time, it was the culture of the oil companies that things must go ahead at all cost – keep producing, keep producing.
“That was the impression I got from it all. Even the management offshore were being pressured to keep producing. Downtime cost money. Safety was more or less a secondary consideration.”
Remarkably, Mike went back offshore to sister Claymore platform five weeks after the disaster.
He said: “When the Piper Bravo was built, I went on there. It upset my wife Doreen but I told her it was my way of coping.”
At night, he would stand at the helideck and look across at the ruined stump of the Piper.
One night, he sensed someone behind him. Mike turned and remarked: “What a waste, eh?” But there was no one there.
Roy, who is married to Dawn, with children Michael, 22, Ian, 19, Cameron, 17, and Amy, 15, now works for Scottish Water.
In 1988, he was working as a mechanic on Piper Alpha.
Roy, 48, said that after the first explosion “everything had moved”.
He added: “The platform basically jumped and settled down again and stuff wasn’t where it was supposed to be. You knew it was a bad one.”
Workers made for their muster points. When Roy realised there was no possibility of helicopter rescue, he and some colleagues tried to find a different escape route.
He said: “You go off by helicopter. You are brainwashed into thinking you will go to your muster point, which was in the galley, and you will go off in an orderly fashion in the helicopter.
“I’m not saying management had lost the plot, but they couldn’t cope with it.
“The lifeboats were around the accommodation and it was like a frying pan. It was burning from below and up the sides – you couldn’t get to the lifeboats.
“The only way was to get into the water somehow.”
Roy, of Keith, Moray, ended up coming on to the pipe deck and jumping.
He added: “If I had stayed there a minute longer, I would have probably perished in the flames.
“I don’t remember hitting the water but I remember thinking it was taking a long time to get there.
“When I was in the water, I was panicking to get back to the surface.That was the point I was actually scared. I didn’t think I'd have enough air left to get back to the surface.”
Roy swam through a sea of bodies as those who had perished floated to the surface.
Molten metal dripped like wax from the rig behind him.
He said: “I’m near 100 per cent sure I was the last person to leave the platform alive.
“No one below that level would have survived. The steel was melting.
“They say if you spend three minutes in the water, you’ll get hypothermia. That night the water was steaming hot – it was bubbling.”
On returning home, Roy said the hardest part was seeing other people’s faces. He recalled how difficult it was to face the families of those who had not returned.
He added: “Everything that could go right that night for me went right. I’ve wondered quite a lot why I made it and the guys next to me didn’t make it. I don’t know. It’s a strange one.
“My wife said she’d never let me go back offshore – but I miss it.
“It was a good life. I never ever felt unsafe on any platform. I never felt unsafe on Piper Alpha before the blast.
“Safety has moved on a good bit since my day.
“They now take gas leaks seriously. Before, you heard alarms go off but you just held back until they stopped.
“Now if an alarm goes off, they go to their muster points – they don’t wait.”
Charles Haffey, who was later awarded the George Medal, the highest civil award for bravery, for his part in rescuing 36 men.
Charles, of Leven, was 26 when he was working on the North Sea platform’s standby vessel, The Silver Pit, and saw the rig erupt into flames.
He said the memories will never go away and it was vital that others know what happened that fateful night, when scores of fathers, grandfathers, brothers, sons and uncles never returned home from work.
Charles Haffey at home on the seafront in Leven, Fife.
“I think about it every day, even after 30 years. Time is maybe a healer but it doesn’t take it away.
“I can be washing the dishes, watching something on the television totally unrelated and it will come back.
“It’s important that we remind and inform as many people as possible that this tragedy happened.
“There are a whole two generations out there that the words Piper Alpha don’t mean a great deal to.
“The industry is not what it was in the 1980s but it has to be kept on its toes and the guys who work out there deserve the best.
“When we are with our families at Christmas, they are out there in the North Sea in one of the most dangerous places on the face of the earth.”
Seaman Charles, a former navy man who served in the Falklands, had gone to bed just before 10pm when he heard an explosion on July 6, 1988.
He and his fellow crew members James McNeill, Andy Kiloh and James Clark jumped aboard their fast rescue craft and went to the platform several times to pick up survivors.
On their final trip they found survivors clinging to life rafts and debris, many of them badly burned.
Those on board The Silver Pit were finally rescued themselves, after the hull of their vessel split as it sailed over a cracked gas pipeline and they were taken on board the Danish Maesrk Cutter.
Charles, a former Fife councillor, suffers flashbacks to this day and said the noise and the heat that night will stay with him to his deathbed.
He said: “I’ve always said that noise will be the last thing I will hear.
“I couldn’t believe that flames could be so loud. You are talking ear splitting. We could not hear people right next to us shouting. We were reduced to using hand signals.”
Charles’ courageous story was recounted in the award-winning documentary Fire in the Night, which has been shown on BBC Two.