The Human Factors of Process Safety and Worker Empowerment in the Offshore Oil Industry Proceedings of a Workshop (2018) / Chapter Skim
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2 The Piper Alpha and the Deepwater Horizon
2 The Piper Alpha and the Deepwater Horizon
Pages 11-22
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From page 11... ...
(Espinoza-Gala) To provide context for the subsequent discussion of safety in the offshore oil industry, each day of the workshop began with a detailed description of one of the industry's worst disasters: on day 1, the 1988 explosion of the Piper Alpha oil production platform in the North Sea, and on day 2, 11
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From page 12... ...
This catastrophic failure appears to have resulted from multiple violations of the laws of public resource development, and its proper regulatory oversight."1 The Piper Alpha, which was located approximately 120 miles northeast of Aberdeen, Scotland, was one of the first oil production platforms in the North Sea, Rae explained. Occidental Petroleum commenced operations on the platform in 1976, first producing only oil.
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From page 13... ...
But in 1988, he said, the demand for oil and the cash flow associated with the Piper Alpha's operation were too high for Occidental to consider shutting the production process down, so the company was attempting to do the recertification of these valves onboard. By July 6, 1988, Rae continued, the Piper Alpha's oil production had fallen to 138,000 barrels a day, but it had added production of around 94 million cubic feet of natural gas to its total output.
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From page 14... ...
An experienced coworker's face registered surprise as the drill floor shook, and he immediately began to safeguard the well they were drilling. Unbeknownst to Rae at the time, the blast immediately destroyed part of the control room, ruined the electrical power and alarm systems, rendered the firewater system inoperable, damaged the firewall between modules B and C, ruptured several oil lines, started multiple oil fires, and engulfed the platform in smoke that blew across the helideck and lifeboats.
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From page 15... ...
Once he had caught his breath, he returned to the drill floor, where he met a colleague named Vince who had worked on the Piper Alpha for some time and knew his way around the platform very well. Vince told Rae they needed to go out the back of the drill floor and down the stairs, in the opposite direction from the lifeboats and living quarters.
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From page 16... ...
To prevent such incidents from occurring in the future, Rae insisted that the workforce must be engaged, empowered, and committed to a safety culture in oil production. Employees need to feel comfortable enough to report potential hazards, unsafe conditions, and errors in the process to their superiors, he said, and the oil production industry must adopt safety standards that protect and engage its workers.
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From page 17... ...
The Macondo drilling disaster, she stated, the largest accidental oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry, was characterized by an environment that lacked all three of these requirements -- the well was misread, and communication was poor among and between rig crew members who worked for multiple companies and shore superiors and middle and top management. Among the 126 men and women on the Deepwater Horizon the night of April 20, 2010, 11 people died as a result of the blowout, and 63 survivors sustained physical injuries requiring multiple surgeries.
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From page 18... ...
But, she added, as Trevor Kletz, renowned author on the topic of process engineering safety, has said, "If you think safety is expensive, try an accident." As of 2018, the Macondo disaster had cost BP approximately $70 billion. Of the 11 who perished aboard the Deepwater Horizon, Espinoza-Gala focused on a particular member of the offshore drilling crew: 35-year-old Jason Anderson, a father of two from Bay City, Texas.
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From page 19... ...
Espinoza-Gala stated that these included deep water, high formation pressures and temperatures, and the need to drill through multiple geologic zones of various pore and fracture pressures. The well was intended for exploratory purposes, she stated, but when deemed successful, BP elected to have the Deepwater Horizon run the production tie back, hoping to increase efficiency.
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From page 20... ...
Espinoza-Gala noted that Donald Vidrine, the BP well site leader who began working on the Deepwater Horizon in January, expressed his frustration over all the last-minute engineering changes during the last 3 weeks of operations. By April 17, she said, Vidrine's concerns were relayed in an e-mail noted in all formal Macondo reports that well site leaders "had finally come to their wits' end and all the last minutes engineering changes were driving fear and paranoia." There was a total loss of confidence on the rig.
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From page 21... ...
The chain of events between February and the disaster could have been interrupted at many points, she asserted, but a lack of preparation and experience and an unclear chain of command prevented key decisions at every step. She stated that all the human and technical decisions made in planning and executing the drilling plan combined in a disaster that had immense consequences for the families of crew members, for the companies involved in the drilling operations, for the Gulf of Mexico, for the world environment, for the global offshore upstream industry, and for the economy of the region.
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