Piper Alpha platform

An initial explosion occurred on the production deck of the Piper Alpha Offshore Platform in the North Sea at about 1 00 PM on July 6,1988. The incident escalated into a tragedy that cost the lives of 165 of the 225 persons on the platform. Two additional fatalities occurred on a rescue boat. The Piper Alpha Platform was totally devastated. 

Speculations about the role of hydrates in disasters such as the Piper Alpha platform (Boniface, 1990) or Lake Nyos (Rogers and Yevi, 1996) are characterized as hypotheses that are not discussed in this book. 

Examples of major accidents that have happened in the industry are the Piper Alpha platform tire and explosion in 1988 that was caused by permit to work (PTW) system failure and layout issues where 165 people died the Bombay High platform, where in 2005 a multi service vessel (MSV) collided with the platform, causing riser damage and a fire that killed 22 people and the Texas City Refinery, where in 2005, maintenance and process start-up flaws caused a petroleum distillate to overflow, causing an explosion and a flash fire that killed 15 people. 

On an offshore platform, however, the persons who are not on duty are still present, and they may be killed or injured. Many of the deaths on the Piper Alpha platform, for example, were of off-duty crew who were sleeping, and who could not escape from the Living Quarters. By contrast, 25 years later, when the explosion and fire occurred on the Deepwater Horizon platform, 11 men died instantly, but the other 135 persons on board survived the blast and subsequent fire. This is an indication that the safety measures that have been designed into platforms in the years following Piper have had a positive effect on safety improvement. 

United Kingdom 1988 Offshore Piper Alpha Platform unknown crude unknown successful on small patch unknown [104]... 

On an offshore platform, however, the persons who are not working are still present on the platform and they may be killed or injured in the event of a catastrophe. Many of the deaths on the Piper Alpha platform, for example, were off-duty crew who were sleeping and who could not escape from the living quarters. 

Smoke is produced by burning hydrocarbons and solids in considerable quantities, (particularly under conditions of incomplete combustion). It is also produced in large quantities by burning electrical and electronic equipment. Smoke consists of finely divided particulate matter and suspended liquid droplets (aerosols) and can contain toxic byproducts of combustion. Smoke creates a serious hazard to personnel due to its physiological effects and the reduction of visibility (most of the deaths on the Piper Alpha platform were of men in their living quarters who were overcome by smoke). 

Especially critical in fire pump installations from open bodies of water is the activity of underwater diver operations in close proximity of the underwater fire pump suction bell or opening. Underwater diving operations routinely occur at the structural support (i.e., the jacket) for offshore installations for corrosion monitoring, modifications, inspections, etc. The high water current at the intake to the submerged pump poses a safety hazard to divers as they may be pulled into this intake. During the operation of the ill fated Piper Alpha platform it was common practice to switch the fire pump to manual startup mode (requiring an individual... 

Over the years, many accidents in the offshore industrial sector have occurred and resulted in many fatalities and a large sum of money being spent on damages. Some examples of the deadliest accidents in the offshore oil and gas industry are the Piper Alpha platform accident in the United Kingdom in 1998, the Mumbai High North Platform accident in India in 2005, and the Alexander L. Kielland accident in Norway in 1980 [3],... 

An extreme example of how violation of the rules can help occurred on the Piper Alpha platform. The rules stated that, in an emergency, the men had to... 

The Piper Alpha platform was a large, fixed-structure platform located about 110 miles north east of Aberdeen in 474 ft of water. It handled both oil and gas. Equipment on board separated the incoming oil and gas streams and created (hydrocarbon) condensate product. The oil and condensate were exported from Piper Alpha through a 30-inch line to the Flotta Terminal. Piper Alpha contributed about 10% of the oil production from the UK sector of the North Sea. 

Isolation - It has been shown that the addition of isolation valves at periodic intervals is not as cost effective as prevention measures such as thickness inspections or tests. However all pipelines should be provided with a means for emergency isolation at it entry or exit from a facility. Offshore facilities may be particularly vulnerable to pipeline incidents as the Piper Alpha disaster has shown. In that accident a contributing factor to the destruction was the backfeed of the contents of the gas pipeline to platform once the topside isolation valve or piping lost its integrity. Further isolation means (i.e., a subsea isolation valve SSIV) were not available. 

Piper Alpha, North Sea Release of hydrocarbons led to an explosion and destruction of the offshore platform. 165 deaths. 

If instmments are placed on manual, particularly emergency instruments, then a common cause event has been created. For example, one of the contributing factors in the Piper Alpha disaster was that both firewater pumps were on manual. They had been placed in that state to ensure that any divers in the water were not sucked into the firewater intake in the event of an automatic start of the pumps. Unfortunately, the fire on the platform prevented operators firom getting to the pumps to turn them on. The lack of firewater capability materially contributed to the magnitude of the disaster. 

A host of worldwide major accidents (a chemical explosion in Texas City, Texas, in 1947 that killed 581 and injured about 3,500 the leak of methyl isocyanate gas in Bhopal, India, in 1984 and the explosion of the Piper Alpha oil platform in the North Sea in 1988 Table 21-1) focused industry and the public to the problem in the United States. This was further prompted by the vision... 

Major organizational accidents such as the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, the explosion of the Chemobyl s nuclear power plant in 1987, the accident with off-shore platform Piper Alpha in 1988 or the destmction of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003, highlighted the relevance of hmnan contributions to organizational safety. Investigations traditionally considered technical and human factors in the development and prevention of these negative events but, in spite of such operational perspective, statistics have revealed the preponderance of human factors in up to 60-70 percent of the situations (e.g., Deldcer, 2002). 

From a historical perspective, the following, fairly succinct, and certainly authoritative, statement on Safety Cases comes from Lord Justice Cullen s report on the Public Inquiry into the Piper Alpha Oil Platform Disaster (Cullen 1990) ... 

We have already noted how, within individual enterprises, losttime injury claims data are not a reliable indicator of safety. The aggregate data collected by compensation authorities are even more problematic from this point of view. If we assume that the aim of a prevention agency is to minimise death, serious injury and longterm disablement, then a focus on LTI claims data will not be helpful. By way of illustration, LTI rates and compensation costs on offshore oil platforms are low, but the potential for disaster is high, as demonstrated by the Piper Alpha disaster in the North Sea in 1987 in which l67 people died. A prevention authority should therefore target such installations despite the negligible numbers of claims which they may generate on an armual basis. 

The Piper Alpha disaster in the North Sea in the mid-1980s, involving over 150 dead, was worsened when natural gas continued to flow from another gas platform to Piper Alpha (which was the jimction or collecting platform) because no-one told the other platform to cut the flow the emergency plans had apparently not included a multiplatform approach. 

The development of fomal safety management systems for offshore oil and gas facilities can be said to have started with the Piper Alpha catastrophe that occurred in 1988. Offshore platforms had had safety programs before that time, of course, usually built around Safety Cases (described in Chapter 8). But Piper Alpha ushered in a new and much more thorough approach to system safety. 

Piper Alpha. The decision to shut down the diesel-driven fire water pumps in order ensure the safety of the divers working under the platform led to the removal of a major safety system. 

Critically important to an understanding of this event is the fact that Piper Alpha was a hub platform. Not only did the platform have its own risers, it also received gas from the Tartan A platform, which was located about 11.5 miles away. The gas flowed to Piper Alpha through a subsea 18-inch pipeline. This gas stream was combined with Piper s own gas, compressed, and sent to the MCP-01 platform, some 33.5 miles away. Some of the gas was also used as lift gas and as fuel for the onboard generators (the gas could also be flared). In addition, another platform—Claymore—could also feed gas to Piper Alpha. All of the platforms were operated by the same company—Occidental. 

The main communications for the complex of platforms were located on Piper Alpha. The explosions took out most of those communications, thus degrading the emergency response. 

Companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico had an equally forceful response to the Piper Alpha incident, but their approach was strategically different. There had not been a Safety Case system prior to Piper Alpha instead there were thousands of platforms (many of them simple, small, and similar to one another). Rather than preparing individual safety cases for each of these near-identical... 

Piper Alpha generated a huge number of lessons learned, many of which provide the basis for the content of this book. Aside from the development of new safety standards and calculation techniques and the writing of new regulations, one of the most important lessons had to do with intervention. The inventory of gas and oil on a platform such as Piper Alpha is quite low, and an emergency always generates a system blowdown. Had the flow of gas from the other platforms been stopped at once, it is likely that the fire would have burned itself out and the nmnber of fatah-ties would have been limited to those caused by the initial explosion. 

Chapter 6 of this book describes the safety case approach to managing risk. One of the reasons that this approach was not followed in the Gulf of Mexico following the Piper Alpha event is that there are thousands of platforms in the Gulf, many of them small, unmanned, and very similar to one another. It would not be feasible to develop a safety case for each of these. 

The requirement for documentation is also covered by Element 13—Records and Documentation. Careful consideration needs to be given as to which information items are to be stored on the rig or platform, and which items can remain in an onshore office. (It will be recalled that one of the difficulties that investigators ran into regarding the Piper Alpha disaster was that key work orders were never recovered.)... 

The Piper Alpha incident is described in Chapter 2. Piper Alpha, like most offshore production platforms, has a very limited on-board inventory of oil and gas. However the platform was also a hub—other platforms were pumping to it. Had they stopped pumping as soon as the first explosion had occurred, the loss of life would have been considerably less than the final toll, and it is likely that the platform would have been saved. 

Yet the Claymore platform continued to feed hydrocarbons even though the offshore installation manager (OIM) on that platform knew that Piper Alpha was suffering a catastrophic fire. Two people could have stopped the flow at once, the OIM himself and the operator reporting to him. Yet neither took action the OIM waited for orders from Aberdeen (an order that could not come because radio communication was via the destroyed Piper Alpha)-, the operator chose not to override his boss s orders. 

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