I was a relatively young taxi driver when this happened and on a coffee break around 3 am saw the waves of helicopters landing quickly decamping their casualties to let another helicopter land at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary , I knew something really bad had obviously happened . Once it hit the news stations we knew exactly how bad . I knew at least six people who were lost, ALL of Aberdeen mourned . The loss is still felt in the city a memorial garden was planted in the Duthie Park along with a monument to the victims .
Not from Aberdeen originally, but been here 20 years, I think It's still a hard thing for a lot of the City to talk about, and for the size of the industry, few didn't know somebody that was lost or lost somebody close to them
This was a hard watch. Lost my father in this horrific disaster. He was only 28 and I was only 18 months old at the time. 6th of July is always a difficult day for our family.
I am a control room operator on an offshore oil platform. The Piper Alpha accident was a disaster that completely changed the industry and is still deeply studied to this day. Several safety procedures were created to prevent such a catastrophe from happening again. May all the workers who lost their lives that day rest in peace.
My dad worked on the piper alpha at one point and many other oil rigs in the north sea. He used to tell me some rather scary stories of helicopters crashing very high waves also loosing a few of his mates. I was one of the lucky people who's dad returned. Lost him earlier this year will always miss him rip dad love you
I've spent alot of my life in the oil and gas industry, never ever just walk away from work without letting a person know verbally what the state of work completion is. One simple conversation could have stopped this from happening...
agreed. i work in machining, which is much safer, but even we leave notes and talk to people on shift changes whenever possible. the simplest way to avoid accidents, property damage, and injuries is simple communication like you said. it's also the most overlooked aspect of safety, unfortunately.
Even onshore. Worked in gas maintenance (security). Had to be so careful on handover depending on what was happening on site and that is literally the most low risk job you could have
I worked for Occidental at the time of the Piper Alpha and lived near the heliport and heard the Puma helicopters over my house in the middle of the night. I knew men who lost their lives, men that gave their life jackets to younger men who had to jump 170 feet into the burning North Sea. 167 workers died, they were the riggers, deck crew, engineers, scaffolders, stewards, chefs, cleaners, welders. Their wives and mothers waiting at the helipad at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary at 3:20 in the morning as the helicopters arrived.
170ft jump is dangerous AF under ideal conditions, lifejacket or no lifejacket...Jumping into a burning slick = I might want no jacket if they were the type that auto-inflated once underwater: you'd be forced up into burning oil. At least without one you could try to swim under it...that's if you didn't get knocked unconscious from the height of the jump; in which case you just die at Step 0 (landing in the water). Brutal stuff. On par with that carrier fire on USS Forrestal: where the rocket started a deck fire, which caused bombs/rockets to explode (killing the firefighting crew), and then the metal etc melting into the lower decks and killing ppl while they slept/were stuck in compartments.
I've just recently come home from my first trip offshore on Piper Bravo, the successor to Piper Alpha. It's very clear they implement a lot of the lessons learned in how they designed and constructed Piper B. The memorial marker buoy for Piper A stands not too far away and really makes you pause for thought, RIP to the men who lost their lives that night.
The "Swiss Cheese" effect was in full display here 1. 2 essential pumps not working at the same time 2. 2 permits with different information for the same job in different areas 3. An oil rig modified for gas processing bypassing safety measures 4. A control room not protected by blast walls 5. Sea pumps in manual mode due to divers in the area 6. No-one willing to shut the oil off from other platforms that were feeding the fire due to company pressure
@DrRock. All correct apart from the last one. It's a commonly held belief that keeping the pil and gas flowing made things worse when this simply isn't true. Piper lacked SSIVs (subsea isolation valves, that were later mandated by the subsequent Cullen Inquiry. When the risers burst at platform level there was nothing left to isolate them below the water. The sheer quantity of gas already in the risers did the majority of the damage, the oil lines just kept the fires burning. The only thing that could've helped was if Claymore l, Tartan and MCP-01 initiated emergency depressurization of the sealines. With 30 mins between the small explosion from the leak to the first riser rupture (Tartan) this may have helped, but there are still questions today as to how quickly all the gas could've been flared or vented off by the systems on board the respective platforms.
Yah, Jim Reason saved us from the tired old accident chain metaphor. But the interesting part of this lethal breakdown was failures within a highly coupled system. The Reason model still applies, but it's just a tool for describing transitional probabilities. The human narrative is so much more interesting and poignant
I first worked on Piper Alpha throughout 1977 as a welding inspector, completing the hookup and installing the flowlines from wellhead to separators. There were many safety incidents while I was there in that first year of production such that the offshore installation manger (OIM) Clyde Bradley began to get concerned that one day it would blow. I returned to assist with the Tartan riser and the installation of Phase 2 gas compression module, which if I remember correctly was the first lift completed by the crane barge Balder (or was it the Hermod?). We had a new Xray machine on board and used the shoreside installed pipework (stainless steel) in the Phase 2 module to calibrate exposures before the hook up to the platform. None of the welding executed in the Belgian (I think) fabrication yard, that we xrayed as part of our calibration tests, passed the engineering specification required. Bringing this to the attention of the Occidental management was met with horror that the module was basically not fit for purpose. But I was informed that it would probably never be used as Phase 1 was achieving better than expected results. I moved on to ther platforms (Claymore, Magnus, Statfjiord A & B, Iwas on Claymore the night the Alexander Kielland capsized ... could be another video ? ) but I did hear a few years later that when they did make the Phase 2 gas module live there was an explosion 3 were seriously injured and two died (I think), details of such events were suppressed in the newspapers. It was about 6 years after I had left that this catastrophe happened but there were 3 names amongst those that died I remember well RIP.
@@jennyanydots2389what on earth is wrong with you?! Do you have any understanding of how statistics work? If 'their peers' (meaning the general population statistic I assume) committed sex crimes at a rate of 1 in a 100, a 67% increase would mean 1.67 in a 100. Accusing a man recounting personal experience of a harrowing disaster which included the loss of friends on that basis alone is utterly disgusting and borderline psychopathic.
There’s a great documentary called Fire in the Night which features interviews and stories of the people on the rig. Also, I work in the industry and a lot of our regulations are referred to as “Tombstone Regulations “ as they only came in after someone was killed.
My dad has come remarkably close to death a number of times; this was one of them, an explosion at the BP site in Grangemouth was another, and he also narrowly missed the 2004 tsunami. Every single one he was either supposed to be there, or had just left.
Definitely not forgotten by me. I worked 2 years on Piper A, and knew a lot of the guys killed. Our company still held the diving contract, and some of my mates were on her that night. All the divers escaped, basically because our fire muster was down at the diving rig, below the main deck levels. I was working about 40 miles away on another site, but we watched it all on TV, horrific. Red Adair himself (legendary Oilfield blowout firefighter) was supposed to have said if there's a disaster going to happen in the North Sea, Piper Alpha was where it would be. It was the most overloaded hardest worked platform in the North Sea and was a victim of Occidental's corporate greed. Nobody was allowed to stop oil production, that was the culture that led to the pump situation.
coming from orkney its something we never forget here, not only because of the flotta link but because the accommodation block was taken here, know people that had to go in to remove the bodies, so sad, rest easy guys
While I was going broke at college a friend of mine was a diesel mechanic on an oil rig and showed up in a $100k truck my sophomore year. Really made me rethink my life choices lol
I'll never forget Piper Alpha. See where I'm from many men work at sea either on fishing or crabbing boats or on the rigs. Several men I knew (I was only a kid but everyone knew everyone) died that day 😢
Excellent video, Simon. I definitely haven't forgotten this disaster. I was a wee lad when Piper Alpha was destroyed and I remember it on the news vividly. The footage of the platform engulfed in fire and smoke when the Claymore line ruptured has been etched into my mind. As an engineer of sorts today, understanding the importance of designing and implementing contingencies, the numerous safety oversights with the gas conversion defy belief. The legacy of this is certainly one of the most prolific cases of tombstone regulation and legislation.
This is still the single worst disaster on any offshore drilling platform in history. There have been many....but this is still the worst in terms of financial, environmental and (most importantly) human cost combined. And so few people know about it. My family are from Aberdeen and this one still hurts. Kudos for making this more public in the present day. Thank you, Simon, and RIP for those who were lost. Many of the families were insufficiently compensated and still are to this day. This is the worst kind of tragedy. I am planning to join some friends on a North Sea rig in the next few months. I've been working in mineral resources security (onshore) for a good 7 years now. I thank my friends for the opportunity. Hope to be joining you our there soon! ... let's see how i hold up! ❤
The story stays alive, I'm down in the south west of Scotland, barely an hour from Carlisle and our lifeboat house still has images of the disaster and rescue. The sea never forgets, but neither do those who work on it.
Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it (not sure if I've got that quite right there... pretty close though). Events like this scar the deepest in communities that have ties to offshore industry. This one is oddly overlooked in the mainstream considering how utterly devastating it was. Strange really.
I wish that were the same outside of Aberdeenshire. “fire In the Night” should be shown every year. Instead it’s nearly impossible to find. Bloody disgrace how buried this accident is in the public consciousness as a whole
True story, my father was supposed to be on Alpha when it went off as a diver, however my older sister was born 2 weeks early so he thankfully wasn’t on it
FYI, even the other rigs DID shutdown the automatic firepumps if the Divers were working directly next to the intakes. The change Piper didn't do was Piper did it as a blanket rule when any divers were working which kept the pumps offline for 12 hours a day for most of the summer. On other rigs it was only if the divers were in a spot of direct danger so just a few days and for only a few hours on those days, which makes sense as the pumps accidentally tripping could happen and Delta P is a horrific way to go.
From Aberdeen with relatives and family friends involved in the Piper disaster this is the one we remember/talk about. I only live a few miles from Piper Alpha memorial gardens 😢😢
My late father was an anaesthetist at ARI, also in the RAMC. They flew out to the rig, but had to return as it was effectively destroyed. He looked after some of the survivors.
If you go to Aberdeen for your Bosiet course, this is the Big example they use for why things are done as they are. It's passed out of public consciousness but everyone that needs to know about it does.
My great uncle was the one in charge of the rotas on the rig. Three people had requested time off on the day of the accident, he denied all three. He quit shortly after 😢
thank you for posting this. one key point that i've read in the comments, but isn't explicit in the video, is how crews on Tartan and Claymore were prevented from shutting down their production - and thus pumping oil INTO Piper - even when they could see Piper was ablaze, due to managerial pressure, and the unwritten rule to keep pumping no matter what. to this day, i do not understand the rationale for "I don't have the authority to..." verses the place where oil is going is literally ON FIRE. my dad worked oil and gas for almost 20 years. and being as i'm almost 50, i remember Piper being on Newsround, it's probably the first "thing" i remember as a kid. that and Challenger exploding on takeoff. i didn't follow dad into the industry, instead i went into operating theatres and am now a senior OR nurse. and, i teach everyone the importance of correct handover, focus on health and safety, and resistance to corporate and managerial influence and badgering for more, more, more. we're not working with oil and gas, sure. we're working with the lives of everyone reading this post. as well as our own. unfortunately the phrase "Safety before Production. Except when safety interferes with Production" is alive and well within the NHS. Peace to all who were lost, that day. #FireInThe Night
I’m currently qualifying as a health and safety manager in the building trade. They make us learn this even at the basic level. Safe systems of work failing on multiple levels
Everyone who dosent know, goes on about the Safety Valve being the problem. I know this situation, and worked in Oil and Gas for many years, and being a safety valve engineer, this was totally down to bad paperwork procedure. It's a massive shame this happened, but as such, has made the changes in procedure to prevent these hazards happening again. A huge condolences for all those involved. It's a rarely appreciated work effort for what is provided for those that benefit
Agreed, as I understand, the pump and the valve were actually in slightly different areas and the paperwork was pigeonholed separately for that reason. Perhaps this caused confusion at the handover.
Why did I immediately think of Byford Dolphin 😅 significantly fewer casualties than your average oil rig disaster, but damn it, it’s been living in my head rent free for years 💀
I was working in the oil industry in Canada (onshore not offshore) when the Ocean Ranger sank in a storm taking 84 crew with it. I remember following the reports into that disaster. Such reports may help us not to make the same mistakes again but new mistakes are always possible.
Piper being part of such a tight network with 3 other rigs and the onshore site at Scapa Flow was it's undoing in two ways. 1. If Pump A was found to be unusable and Pump B couldn't be restarted, they'd reach an overfill condition and have to shut down the rig fully, knocking it out of use for a month. This would in turn knock out Claymore, Tartan, and MCP-001 as they needed Piper for the system to work, which would leave the Scapa Flow facility forced to shutdown. This would basically wipe out two thirds of the UK's petroleum capacity and it would take 2-3 months to get all the rigs working again fully and the shore facility back up to capacity. The UK would go into recession. You know how toxic normal work culture is to productivity? Imagine having all that on your shoulders. 2. Due in part to Number 1 and also just due to communication breakdowns caused by losing the control room(Piper's control room was the main phone and comm center of the rigs, with it gone none of them could talk to each other at all except on radios which could only talk to one person at a time) none of the other rigs shut down their gas supply. The fire in Module B was bad, really bad, single worst place to have a fire, but the firewalls outside of the immediate blast in C were contained. The accomodation bloc was fireproofed and could wait out the fire. Module A(where the line connecting to the sea floor was) had it's firewalls intact and the line to the ocean had been cut by the control room preventing a Deepwater Horizon scenario. The other rigs also cut the oil supply thanks to the initial control room distress broadcast, though due to pipe backflow it would take a couple hours to run out. Even without the fire pumps the rig should have been able to hold out for a couple hours. The Tartan Gas Riser exploding introduced 120 tons of gas per second, and MCP-001 50% more than that. Once that happened the rig was doomed. Cutting off the gas(while fully depressing took hours) would lower the risk of them busting in fire, and no diving mats below Tartan means the cook-off time is way slower. The fact Tharos was on site should have saved them in any other situation, even with the firefighting knocked out Tharos just needed a bit more time to get the gangway and pumps up and it could put out the oil fire. Due to the phone lines being out they only used radios, Claymore and MCP-001 were both calling the mainland asking for advice and permission to shut down the gas lines(late at night no one responded) and Claymore's backup radio was being used to talk to Tharos. Netiher of them got the radio message from Tartan that their gas riser had failed and they were making an emergency shutdown urging the other rigs to follow. All 3 rigs constantly worked under the assumption Piper Alpha's firefighting system was working and the fire was under control. The rule for shutting down was Piper had to actively request it and with the control room destroyed they never did. This is also why people piled up in the accomodation block. The rule was "Go to the lifeboats, if they're blocked by fire go to the fireproof block and wait for further instructions and helicopter rescue". Further instructions never came as the Control Room was abandoned and the oil fire's location made the helipad useless, so they just waited and waited until the rig collapsed. Basically the whole system hinged on the Control Room being active during a disaster, hence it being located behind a firewall above Module C and D, away from the Oil storage in Module B and the oil well in Module A. The gas pumps being there wasn't in the original design.
Two elements from the Piper Alpha story highlight, to me at least, the total absence of an effective safety culture in the North Sea at the time. First off, why was the defective pump not safetied so that it could not be brought back into use in its unworkable condition? Would it really have been that difficult to pull and clip the relevant circuit breaker, as occurs in aviation, or fit a guard over the switch? The second is the story of the manager on the nearby platform who continued to pump product towards the visibly burning Piper Alpha because he felt that he did not have sufficient authority to make that decision himself. While an earlier shutoff from there probably wouldn’t have made a significant difference to the outcome, it makes you wonder under what circumstances the manager would have ordered a shutoff. What was even the point of his role if he wasn’t empowered to make safety decisions?
my opinion, back then safety was not a big thing, the pressure was on to get production, it always has been. i worked in a timber frame factory from 2017 to 2022 and the amount of new starts that put 90mm nails in there hands was at least twice a year as the pressure is on to get the job done no matter their skill level. in the building trade, there are people that still take risks with their safety because they have done that for decades and never think they will do something wrong. its a difficult attitude to change when you have a manager forcing pressure on employees for production over safety. it seems obvious now to lock out the pump but back then there was a system, a bad system, that someone has thought out and feels it was a good enough system if everyone followed it. another problem is humans being humans and making mistakes. not every system is full proof, as time goes on the system has tweaks to it as its used and flaws found out. unfortunately multiple flaws happened in the system at the same time the night Piper Alpha went up in flames.
@douglasreid699 exactly. I work on heavy equipment in plants, and on dirt sites. I work around millwrights, iron workers, equipment operators, electricians ect... one day I was on site as I normally am, site mech for our company, and noticed a few iron workers welding galvanized steel. No respirators or ventilation. I told them to stop and get the proper PPE. I was told.to go away as they had been doing this for X number of years and I didn't know what I was talking about. Well I did and so I went to the safety person and told them. They didn't know anything about the health concerns with welding galvanized steel so I explained it to them. They called the safety manager and were told to stop.the work immediately. This work stop caused quite the commotion at the company and the project manager went to the CEO of the company trying to get me fired. In the end I wasn't fired but I was shut out by a lot of the guys working that project for a while. It reminded me that safety is only as good as the workers and the safety people on the site. And even in 2024 workers willingly bypass safety measures for no good reason. All those guys get paid by the hour, have very god union protection against company harassment for stopping work for safety reasons and get more then just the required OSHA training. Yet they all were 100% willing to bypass all of it simply becaise they didn't want to wear a fresh air breathing mask.
As I understand work had not yet begun on the pump itself so it was still regarded to be in workable condition according to its work permit. Due to the fact that the safety valve was at a higher up location and could not be seen from the level of the pump cause it was obscured by machinery and piping + had a completey separate work/safety permit noone but the maintenance workers of the safety valve knew about this. They had written in the valve permit that the pump must not be started under ANY condition but since noone else saw this permit but only the one for the pump wich said that it was ok to start the pump they then proceeded to start it and the disaster was a fact. One thing that could had prevented the disaster would have been if the valve workers had properly wrench tightened the blind they had put over the valve connection but it was only hand tightened, probably so they quickly could resume work next day but that of course meant that this blind served no purpose whatsoever and condensate gas spewed freely from the loosley tighened seal when the pump was turned on. The urgency to get the other pump going was also not just to keep production flowing but since the gas turbine generators providing all power for the entire rig relied on these pumps to provide their fuel they had only a few hours before the generators and thus the entire rig would shut down and they would be forced to do a so called black start wich as I get it could take days to get everything up and running again. The decission from the other platforms to then continue to pump gas to the platform even they could see it was on fire because they were afraid getting fired for not having authority is just crazy! If u see something burning u push the emergency stop immediatley without hesitation! Sure it will take time to start up again but it might had reduced the totally horrific death toll. Human lives are worth nothing however when money is to be made by executive bosses, CEOs and shareholders! Very sad! Greed have caused so many horrible disasters! :(
They did have lock out tag out, the problem was the Pump WAS safe to restart, the VALVE wasn't, and it was in a separate room with a completely separate tagging and paperwork system.
He did legally have enough authority to do so, it just was heavily discouraged and he would have lost his job if Piper ended up with only minor damage.
Small correction Simon. The 'blockage' (known in the industry as a blank flange) was located on a pipe leading to the removed safety valve that branched off the pump discharge line. If it had been properly secured when the pump was turned on, the condensate would've traveled on its merry way without incident (although it's extremely bad practice and often illegal to run a process without appropriate overpressure protection in place). It's highly likely that if this had happened, it would've been noticed by the same technician the following day when the safety valve work was restarted and the situation corrected.
Yep, from my understanding, the PSV blind flanges were only hot bolted, and not torqued properly. If they had been fully bolted and torqued, the system could have been run, albeit as you have said, very VERY bad practice to run without a PSV on the pump discharge line. As long as there were no further blockages to cause a dangerous pressure increase anywhere downstream, they might have gotten away with it, though heads would have rolled the next day when they figured out the missing PSV.
Remember when Piper Alpha happened. Was watching the TV & my Mum & Dad were in tears. My Uncle was on it. (They didn't break it to me until later since I was a bairn)
For my induction of my current job we took a deep dive into piper alpha disaster. Platforms claymore and tartan were still pumping to alpha even though they could see the fire in the distance but were afraid to turn off due to the "production is god" culture. The guy giving the induction ended with "what tiny insignificant object could have prevented the disaster a paperclip. To keep the permits together"
Well, I've rarely heard a tale that so perfectly exemplifies the old saying "everything that can go wrong, *will* go wrong." So many countermeasures damaged by the unforeseen explosion, and those that weren't, were just unfortunately turned off at the time of the incident... Truly, a series of unfortunate events, if there ever was one.
I worked for BT at this time, and some of my distant colleagues working on board were killed. We were probably the first people to realise there was a problem when the comms failed.
Lived in Aberdeen for nearly 20 years now, Piper Alpha is something that City will always remember, and still causes a lot of people a lot of grief. I Drive a lorry so being in Aberdeen a lot is oil industry related, and there is a huge amount if industry that go into testing and checking so much equipment that goes out to the rigs, can sometimes feel ridiculous that you can you can go into one place one day, it gets something done to it, then off to another place then back to the first one, then off somewhere else where it gets packed to go away again easy to forget after a while why, until you remember what happened not far off the coast
The lessons learned from this changed the whole safety regime in the UKCS, which led to the highest standards in the world. Just a pity we only learn fro things going wrong.
This was horrifying at the time. I live in Scotland and at the time a lot of people knew someone who was working "on the rigs" so this really hit home hard. What happened to those poor guys was so sad.
As a firefighter even I can’t imagine the heat from an inferno like this and I’ve experienced fires that melted plastic and paint on firetrucks plus a natural gas main pipeline explosion whose flames could be heard miles away. We staged a mile away from the scene and verbal communication was impossible from the roar of the flame nevermind the heat we felt even at that distance. I can’t imagine the hell everyone on the Piper Alpha experienced.
More minor spills being reported is a GOOD thing. I guarantee there are no more minor spills now than there used to be, but now these spills are being reported more often. This shows a strong safety culture and gives management and regulators the information needed to prevent them from happening.
I'm used to listening to the long form casual criminalist videos and at the end of this I was half expecting you to say and this is the story of the piper alpha disaster
I knew the youngest guy that died on that unfortunately was playing squash with him (junior league game) a night or 2 before, From what I recall from what he said on that night it was his 1st trip offshore rememeber him being quite excited about it he must hame only been about 17-18 didnt actually know him overly well just what | did from the few times I played him seemed very sureal fro me at just 14-15yrs old remember when the live news of the disaster rolled in it crossing my mind wonder if that was the rig he was on followed by surely not although i never at the time had any idea how many rigs there was I knew there was literally dozens.......Well....Turns out a few days to a week later very much confirmed so....very nice guy such a shame indeed!
People outside of Scotland and sea rescue work are lucky to not know about this. I wasn't even born at the time, but it was part of my education. I even sat in one of the SeaKings after its retirement. And yet, thousands of people from Scotland still work on the rigs because the hazard pay is too enticing.
I've read about this disaster. The psychological consequences to the survivors were terrible. Lots of continuing survivor's guilt and suicides years later. And at the time Aberdeen's population was only about 202,000. The impact on the community was massive, as many Scottish commenters have pointed out.
Spare a thought for those who perished and those who survived. I was 13 when this occurred. Sounded like horror-show, then . Thanks for the walk-through, now that I've worked in similarly hazardous environments that memorials on Bravo , and elsewhere.
The problem with safety is it's a somewhat nebulas idea in that yes obvious actions can cause disaster (step out into traffic you're likely to get hurt) but small actions/inactions can't be seen as a problem until a chain of other actions/inactions combine to bring about catastrophe, I try to work as safely as possible but even so have had some near misses.
Wonderful introduction and wonderful technical explanations video...oil fields are contaminating air,soil , and water continuously without feeling of responsibilities toward whole life on the planet. For companies greedy
I am 50 years old. As far as I can tell in the real world, safety and efficiency can never work hand in hand. Every executive will want maximum profit and will hide all the dangers as long as they can.
Tharos was built specifically to combat out of control rig fires when firefighting on board failed, and while many at the time considered it a publicity/security theater machine(as it was so slow moving it could never respond to a serious threat in time unless it happened to be stationed at that specific rig, and it rotated between them), it was right next to Piper Alpha by sheer chance when the explosion happened. The fact that the Tharos was specifically built for fighting oil fires and was right there and yet still failed to put out the fires is a testimate to the poor training and matinence of it's crews. Oh and Tharos was later converted(due to it's failures as a firefighting vessel) into a well drilling rig and in 2009 drilled the Macondo Well, which once it left would be tended to in 2010 by...The Deepwater Horizon.
@@monkeymagic4555 True, but if you read the reports of that night Tharo's crew did not know what they were doing at all. (Oil supply also was cut off eventually by Claymore and Tartan, it was the gas lines that doomed the rig). The water pumps tripped constantly delaying firefighting, they had issues extending the gangway(which would both make firefighting easier and give them a ladder to evacute stranded men off the rig platform with) and they refused to fight the worst of the fire as they didn't want to hit/flay the people nearby. Seemingly the Tharos wanted to slowly evacuate everyone by Gangway and then fight the fire which there was not time for. Had the Tharos been game and going and not scared of accidentally skinning a guy or two they were more than capable of keeping the oil fire down enough to protect Tartan's Riser and eventually wait for the oil fire to burn out once the other rigs cut it(which was happening slowly, just not very quickly due to the communication issues). Even after Tartan broke they theoretically could have targeted the heart of that fire and surpressed the worst of the fireball to buy some significant time. It was the failure of MCP-001's monsterously large gas line that ultimately forced Tharos back after killing 2 of their crew and doomed the rig. Also had both Tharos and the other rigs acted properly that combination would have saved most people. Had the other rigs cut off their stuff immediately there's still a high chance the rig would have been lost as the diving mats sped up the failure rate of the Tartan line way way above what it was supposed to be, and Tharos on it's own facing a fire fed by the other rigs would always be playing defense and not be able to put the fire out. Either on it's own would save some lives absolutely, but both together would have saved most of them. Tharos working properly could easily tie a fire down for 2 or 3 hours, by which point the oil lines would have run empty and the gas lines would have been depressured to a point they'd no longer be at risk of burning. They could survive a rig which had lost internal firefighting capacity. They could survive a rig who's oil supply wasn't cut-off(albeit they predicted being unable to cut the line to the ocean was more likely than other rigs not cutting off, which in Piper was the opposite, the sea floor line WAS cut). They could survive without external assistance for rescue or firefighting. Two of these happening at once would kill dozens and dozens of people. All 3 happening at once is what happened to Piper.
I was 9 at the time and living under the flight path to the airport. The lasting memory I still have is the never ending wave after wave of helicopters going to refuel after they had dropped off at ARI to head back out. Everyone knew something was up. Found out in the days after that our neighbours son died in Piper.
Only 1 dude. The guys further inside the chamber were seemingly intact. Until they were opened up by medical personell; revealing that their insides were spongy mush.
I got confused at first reading the closed captions when I knew Simon was saying "Pump A" but I ware reading "Pompeii" 😖 Otherwise this story is horrifying.
How lucky the Survivors on Piper Alpha were that there was a Medical Conference in Edinburgh attended by the Best of Britain's Burn Injury Surgeons that were close enough on hand to spread around the Hospitals and treat them as soon as the helicopters landed.
For one, a piece of equipment intentionally de-activated should not be able to be turned on from a remote location. Two, leaving pipes and equipment compromised or repairs unfinished, going off your shift, scribbling some vague notes and leaving them on a supervisors desk is irresponsible and complacent. Three, equipment that 'should not be turned on under any circumstances' should be disabled to prevent anyone from turning it on, under any circumstances. Lastly, this is an oil rig. Everyone is there. Maybe buzz the barracks and ask Joey the mechanic, if it's alright to use Pump A.
You missed the most important aspect of the disaster. Because the PA was a hub the other wellheads attached to it never stopped the flow of oil and gas to the PA despite being able to see the massive explosions and fires. They never considered that the oil and gas from their continued production might be what was causing the PA to still be burning.
Funny coincidence, E1999 Eternal by Bone Thugz N Harmony was my favorite album when I was a little 8y/o white kid. I also really liked Country Grammar, but I was like 15 then (still a goofy white kid).
Title is off there are literally memorials throughout aberdeen and over 100+ health and safety regulations put in place after discovery. Piper Alpha disaster is far from forgotten.
I remember piper alpha its what comes to mind when you say oil rig disaster, just like Chernobyl comes to mind when I think of nuclear disaster, and I watch the TV shows about both.
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I was a relatively young taxi driver when this happened and on a coffee break around 3 am saw the waves of helicopters landing quickly decamping their casualties to let another helicopter land at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary , I knew something really bad had obviously happened . Once it hit the news stations we knew exactly how bad . I knew at least six people who were lost, ALL of Aberdeen mourned . The loss is still felt in the city a memorial garden was planted in the Duthie Park along with a monument to the victims .
A 2021 Stanford study showed that over 79% of all taxi drivers are registered or unregistered sex offenders.
All of us from the Western Isles mourned too. Several of our boys never returned also. I was a child but will never forget that day 😢
Interesting
Not from Aberdeen originally, but been here 20 years, I think It's still a hard thing for a lot of the City to talk about, and for the size of the industry, few didn't know somebody that was lost or lost somebody close to them
I remember the inquest being held in the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre (AECC) and the Occidental regional office was just across the road.
This was a hard watch. Lost my father in this horrific disaster. He was only 28 and I was only 18 months old at the time. 6th of July is always a difficult day for our family.
I'm sorry bud. I, too, recall that dark day well.
So sorry to hear that.
I am a control room operator on an offshore oil platform. The Piper Alpha accident was a disaster that completely changed the industry and is still deeply studied to this day. Several safety procedures were created to prevent such a catastrophe from happening again. May all the workers who lost their lives that day rest in peace.
An may all the workers who did survive find peace aswell
unfortunately, safety procedures are written in someone else's blood
@LoPhatKao not always sometimes there very little left as in the byford dolphin incident
My dad worked on the piper alpha at one point and many other oil rigs in the north sea. He used to tell me some rather scary stories of helicopters crashing very high waves also loosing a few of his mates. I was one of the lucky people who's dad returned. Lost him earlier this year will always miss him rip dad love you
Ditto my dad
I've spent alot of my life in the oil and gas industry, never ever just walk away from work without letting a person know verbally what the state of work completion is. One simple conversation could have stopped this from happening...
agreed. i work in machining, which is much safer, but even we leave notes and talk to people on shift changes whenever possible. the simplest way to avoid accidents, property damage, and injuries is simple communication like you said. it's also the most overlooked aspect of safety, unfortunately.
Exactly. Proper handover conduct
Even onshore. Worked in gas maintenance (security). Had to be so careful on handover depending on what was happening on site and that is literally the most low risk job you could have
I worked for Occidental at the time of the Piper Alpha and lived near the heliport and heard the Puma helicopters over my house in the middle of the night. I knew men who lost their lives, men that gave their life jackets to younger men who had to jump 170 feet into the burning North Sea. 167 workers died, they were the riggers, deck crew, engineers, scaffolders, stewards, chefs, cleaners, welders. Their wives and mothers waiting at the helipad at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary at 3:20 in the morning as the helicopters arrived.
Cap. Have studied the incident well and there's no story of jackets being exchanged.. cap.
@MagicianStallion some stories don't get recorded, knowing people who survived will often reveal things that research does not.
170ft jump is dangerous AF under ideal conditions, lifejacket or no lifejacket...Jumping into a burning slick = I might want no jacket if they were the type that auto-inflated once underwater: you'd be forced up into burning oil.
At least without one you could try to swim under it...that's if you didn't get knocked unconscious from the height of the jump; in which case you just die at Step 0 (landing in the water).
Brutal stuff. On par with that carrier fire on USS Forrestal: where the rocket started a deck fire, which caused bombs/rockets to explode (killing the firefighting crew), and then the metal etc melting into the lower decks and killing ppl while they slept/were stuck in compartments.
I've just recently come home from my first trip offshore on Piper Bravo, the successor to Piper Alpha. It's very clear they implement a lot of the lessons learned in how they designed and constructed Piper B. The memorial marker buoy for Piper A stands not too far away and really makes you pause for thought, RIP to the men who lost their lives that night.
The "Swiss Cheese" effect was in full display here
1. 2 essential pumps not working at the same time
2. 2 permits with different information for the same job in different areas
3. An oil rig modified for gas processing bypassing safety measures
4. A control room not protected by blast walls
5. Sea pumps in manual mode due to divers in the area
6. No-one willing to shut the oil off from other platforms that were feeding the fire due to company pressure
Been working offshore for 12 years. This was always the default case they'd use to teach about safety
@DrRock. All correct apart from the last one. It's a commonly held belief that keeping the pil and gas flowing made things worse when this simply isn't true. Piper lacked SSIVs (subsea isolation valves, that were later mandated by the subsequent Cullen Inquiry. When the risers burst at platform level there was nothing left to isolate them below the water. The sheer quantity of gas already in the risers did the majority of the damage, the oil lines just kept the fires burning. The only thing that could've helped was if Claymore l, Tartan and MCP-01 initiated emergency depressurization of the sealines. With 30 mins between the small explosion from the leak to the first riser rupture (Tartan) this may have helped, but there are still questions today as to how quickly all the gas could've been flared or vented off by the systems on board the respective platforms.
Yah, Jim Reason saved us from the tired old accident chain metaphor. But the interesting part of this lethal breakdown was failures within a highly coupled system. The Reason model still applies, but it's just a tool for describing transitional probabilities. The human narrative is so much more interesting and poignant
Safety management systems 101
Greed kills.
I first worked on Piper Alpha throughout 1977 as a welding inspector, completing the hookup and installing the flowlines from wellhead to separators. There were many safety incidents while I was there in that first year of production such that the offshore installation manger (OIM) Clyde Bradley began to get concerned that one day it would blow. I returned to assist with the Tartan riser and the installation of Phase 2 gas compression module, which if I remember correctly was the first lift completed by the crane barge Balder (or was it the Hermod?). We had a new Xray machine on board and used the shoreside installed pipework (stainless steel) in the Phase 2 module to calibrate exposures before the hook up to the platform. None of the welding executed in the Belgian (I think) fabrication yard, that we xrayed as part of our calibration tests, passed the engineering specification required. Bringing this to the attention of the Occidental management was met with horror that the module was basically not fit for purpose. But I was informed that it would probably never be used as Phase 1 was achieving better than expected results. I moved on to ther platforms (Claymore, Magnus, Statfjiord A & B, Iwas on Claymore the night the Alexander Kielland capsized ... could be another video ? ) but I did hear a few years later that when they did make the Phase 2 gas module live there was an explosion 3 were seriously injured and two died (I think), details of such events were suppressed in the newspapers. It was about 6 years after I had left that this catastrophe happened but there were 3 names amongst those that died I remember well RIP.
@@jennyanydots2389what on earth is wrong with you?! Do you have any understanding of how statistics work? If 'their peers' (meaning the general population statistic I assume) committed sex crimes at a rate of 1 in a 100, a 67% increase would mean 1.67 in a 100. Accusing a man recounting personal experience of a harrowing disaster which included the loss of friends on that basis alone is utterly disgusting and borderline psychopathic.
@@cjlake5754it's a troll. Look at the other comments left on this channel. Best not engage with it.
@@adenkyramud5005 That's a real jerk thing to say brugh.
@@jennyanydots2389 Your mortal coil needs to end in the near future.
@@griffinmckenzie7203 Weak
There’s a great documentary called Fire in the Night which features interviews and stories of the people on the rig.
Also, I work in the industry and a lot of our regulations are referred to as “Tombstone Regulations “ as they only came in after someone was killed.
Yeah I saw that years ago. Bob Ballantyne was talking on it. He did a few.hears after the documentary I think
Same thing here, having worked in both aviation and nuclear energy industries. Safety rules are almost always written in blood.
My dad has come remarkably close to death a number of times; this was one of them, an explosion at the BP site in Grangemouth was another, and he also narrowly missed the 2004 tsunami. Every single one he was either supposed to be there, or had just left.
At this point I would just stay inside😂
So what you are telling me is that if I ever meet your dad, I either need to:
A. Leave immediately
Or
B. Stick to your dad like glue.
It's you again, rosyface.
Sorry I'm just having Déjà Vu
Omfg :O
Definitely not forgotten by me. I worked 2 years on Piper A, and knew a lot of the guys killed. Our company still held the diving contract, and some of my mates were on her that night. All the divers escaped, basically because our fire muster was down at the diving rig, below the main deck levels. I was working about 40 miles away on another site, but we watched it all on TV, horrific. Red Adair himself (legendary Oilfield blowout firefighter) was supposed to have said if there's a disaster going to happen in the North Sea, Piper Alpha was where it would be. It was the most overloaded hardest worked platform in the North Sea and was a victim of Occidental's corporate greed. Nobody was allowed to stop oil production, that was the culture that led to the pump situation.
When I worked in oil and gas, Piper alpha was the catalyst for nearly all of the safety rules and procedures. That disaster has provented many more.
It's alarming how quickly people forget that safety regulations are written in blood
Never forgotten in Scotland. I remember the news at the time, there was nothing else on the news for ages.
Piper Alpha is the first oil rig disaster I think of, probably because I remember seeing it on the television as a kid. The footage terrified me.
I remember having a special assembly about it at school. Everything about it was terrifying as a child- but much scarier reading about it as an adult.
@@johntaylorson7769 very true.
coming from orkney its something we never forget here, not only because of the flotta link but because the accommodation block was taken here, know people that had to go in to remove the bodies, so sad, rest easy guys
This was all over the news when I was a kid. I’ll never forget it. RIP the crew whom lost their lives and 🙏🙏🙏 for the injured. Thanks for the video!
While I was going broke at college a friend of mine was a diesel mechanic on an oil rig and showed up in a $100k truck my sophomore year. Really made me rethink my life choices lol
Props for the sound leveling.
Thank you for listening to the viewers.
I'll never forget Piper Alpha. See where I'm from many men work at sea either on fishing or crabbing boats or on the rigs. Several men I knew (I was only a kid but everyone knew everyone) died that day 😢
Excellent video, Simon. I definitely haven't forgotten this disaster. I was a wee lad when Piper Alpha was destroyed and I remember it on the news vividly. The footage of the platform engulfed in fire and smoke when the Claymore line ruptured has been etched into my mind. As an engineer of sorts today, understanding the importance of designing and implementing contingencies, the numerous safety oversights with the gas conversion defy belief. The legacy of this is certainly one of the most prolific cases of tombstone regulation and legislation.
This is still the single worst disaster on any offshore drilling platform in history. There have been many....but this is still the worst in terms of financial, environmental and (most importantly) human cost combined. And so few people know about it. My family are from Aberdeen and this one still hurts.
Kudos for making this more public in the present day. Thank you, Simon, and RIP for those who were lost. Many of the families were insufficiently compensated and still are to this day. This is the worst kind of tragedy.
I am planning to join some friends on a North Sea rig in the next few months. I've been working in mineral resources security (onshore) for a good 7 years now. I thank my friends for the opportunity. Hope to be joining you our there soon! ... let's see how i hold up! ❤
The story stays alive, I'm down in the south west of Scotland, barely an hour from Carlisle and our lifeboat house still has images of the disaster and rescue. The sea never forgets, but neither do those who work on it.
Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it (not sure if I've got that quite right there... pretty close though). Events like this scar the deepest in communities that have ties to offshore industry. This one is oddly overlooked in the mainstream considering how utterly devastating it was. Strange really.
I Definitely didn't forget the images I saw on the news when this happened.
I grew up in Aberdeenshire. Can assure you none of us have forgotten Piper Alpha, and we never will.
I wish that were the same outside of Aberdeenshire. “fire In the Night” should be shown every year. Instead it’s nearly impossible to find.
Bloody disgrace how buried this accident is in the public consciousness as a whole
I haven't forgotten Piper Alpha. A friend of mine, left school 2 years ahead of me, died on that platform.
True story, my father was supposed to be on Alpha when it went off as a diver, however my older sister was born 2 weeks early so he thankfully wasn’t on it
FYI, even the other rigs DID shutdown the automatic firepumps if the Divers were working directly next to the intakes. The change Piper didn't do was Piper did it as a blanket rule when any divers were working which kept the pumps offline for 12 hours a day for most of the summer. On other rigs it was only if the divers were in a spot of direct danger so just a few days and for only a few hours on those days, which makes sense as the pumps accidentally tripping could happen and Delta P is a horrific way to go.
You finally covered this, thank you!
From Aberdeen with relatives and family friends involved in the Piper disaster this is the one we remember/talk about. I only live a few miles from Piper Alpha memorial gardens 😢😢
My late father was an anaesthetist at ARI, also in the RAMC. They flew out to the rig, but had to return as it was effectively destroyed. He looked after some of the survivors.
If you go to Aberdeen for your Bosiet course, this is the Big example they use for why things are done as they are. It's passed out of public consciousness but everyone that needs to know about it does.
Even when you go for your Bosiet course in the Netherlands, it is mentioned, with the Cullen report.
Health and safety procedures are written in blood, as they say.
This is not forgotten and will never be. Immortalised many times in safety videos required to be watched by anyone working offshore.
I worked for the Drilling Company Bawden on that field may they all rest in peace 🙏🙏
My great uncle was the one in charge of the rotas on the rig. Three people had requested time off on the day of the accident, he denied all three. He quit shortly after 😢
thank you for posting this.
one key point that i've read in the comments, but isn't explicit in the video, is how crews on Tartan and Claymore were prevented from shutting down their production - and thus pumping oil INTO Piper - even when they could see Piper was ablaze, due to managerial pressure, and the unwritten rule to keep pumping no matter what.
to this day, i do not understand the rationale for "I don't have the authority to..." verses the place where oil is going is literally ON FIRE.
my dad worked oil and gas for almost 20 years. and being as i'm almost 50, i remember Piper being on Newsround, it's probably the first "thing" i remember as a kid. that and Challenger exploding on takeoff.
i didn't follow dad into the industry, instead i went into operating theatres and am now a senior OR nurse.
and, i teach everyone the importance of correct handover, focus on health and safety, and resistance to corporate and managerial influence and badgering for more, more, more.
we're not working with oil and gas, sure. we're working with the lives of everyone reading this post. as well as our own. unfortunately the phrase "Safety before Production. Except when safety interferes with Production" is alive and well within the NHS.
Peace to all who were lost, that day. #FireInThe Night
I’m currently qualifying as a health and safety manager in the building trade. They make us learn this even at the basic level. Safe systems of work failing on multiple levels
Everyone who dosent know, goes on about the Safety Valve being the problem. I know this situation, and worked in Oil and Gas for many years, and being a safety valve engineer, this was totally down to bad paperwork procedure. It's a massive shame this happened, but as such, has made the changes in procedure to prevent these hazards happening again.
A huge condolences for all those involved. It's a rarely appreciated work effort for what is provided for those that benefit
Agreed, as I understand, the pump and the valve were actually in slightly different areas and the paperwork was pigeonholed separately for that reason. Perhaps this caused confusion at the handover.
My stepdad left the rig the day before it happened, he lost a few pals that day. Thats a disaster that aberdeen as a city will never forget
Why did I immediately think of Byford Dolphin 😅 significantly fewer casualties than your average oil rig disaster, but damn it, it’s been living in my head rent free for years 💀
My dad was an oil rig welder all his career. When Piper Alpha happened he was heartbroken
I was working in the oil industry in Canada (onshore not offshore) when the Ocean Ranger sank in a storm taking 84 crew with it. I remember following the reports into that disaster. Such reports may help us not to make the same mistakes again but new mistakes are always possible.
Piper being part of such a tight network with 3 other rigs and the onshore site at Scapa Flow was it's undoing in two ways.
1. If Pump A was found to be unusable and Pump B couldn't be restarted, they'd reach an overfill condition and have to shut down the rig fully, knocking it out of use for a month. This would in turn knock out Claymore, Tartan, and MCP-001 as they needed Piper for the system to work, which would leave the Scapa Flow facility forced to shutdown. This would basically wipe out two thirds of the UK's petroleum capacity and it would take 2-3 months to get all the rigs working again fully and the shore facility back up to capacity. The UK would go into recession. You know how toxic normal work culture is to productivity? Imagine having all that on your shoulders.
2. Due in part to Number 1 and also just due to communication breakdowns caused by losing the control room(Piper's control room was the main phone and comm center of the rigs, with it gone none of them could talk to each other at all except on radios which could only talk to one person at a time) none of the other rigs shut down their gas supply. The fire in Module B was bad, really bad, single worst place to have a fire, but the firewalls outside of the immediate blast in C were contained. The accomodation bloc was fireproofed and could wait out the fire. Module A(where the line connecting to the sea floor was) had it's firewalls intact and the line to the ocean had been cut by the control room preventing a Deepwater Horizon scenario. The other rigs also cut the oil supply thanks to the initial control room distress broadcast, though due to pipe backflow it would take a couple hours to run out. Even without the fire pumps the rig should have been able to hold out for a couple hours. The Tartan Gas Riser exploding introduced 120 tons of gas per second, and MCP-001 50% more than that. Once that happened the rig was doomed. Cutting off the gas(while fully depressing took hours) would lower the risk of them busting in fire, and no diving mats below Tartan means the cook-off time is way slower. The fact Tharos was on site should have saved them in any other situation, even with the firefighting knocked out Tharos just needed a bit more time to get the gangway and pumps up and it could put out the oil fire.
Due to the phone lines being out they only used radios, Claymore and MCP-001 were both calling the mainland asking for advice and permission to shut down the gas lines(late at night no one responded) and Claymore's backup radio was being used to talk to Tharos. Netiher of them got the radio message from Tartan that their gas riser had failed and they were making an emergency shutdown urging the other rigs to follow. All 3 rigs constantly worked under the assumption Piper Alpha's firefighting system was working and the fire was under control. The rule for shutting down was Piper had to actively request it and with the control room destroyed they never did. This is also why people piled up in the accomodation block. The rule was "Go to the lifeboats, if they're blocked by fire go to the fireproof block and wait for further instructions and helicopter rescue". Further instructions never came as the Control Room was abandoned and the oil fire's location made the helipad useless, so they just waited and waited until the rig collapsed. Basically the whole system hinged on the Control Room being active during a disaster, hence it being located behind a firewall above Module C and D, away from the Oil storage in Module B and the oil well in Module A. The gas pumps being there wasn't in the original design.
Two elements from the Piper Alpha story highlight, to me at least, the total absence of an effective safety culture in the North Sea at the time.
First off, why was the defective pump not safetied so that it could not be brought back into use in its unworkable condition? Would it really have been that difficult to pull and clip the relevant circuit breaker, as occurs in aviation, or fit a guard over the switch?
The second is the story of the manager on the nearby platform who continued to pump product towards the visibly burning Piper Alpha because he felt that he did not have sufficient authority to make that decision himself. While an earlier shutoff from there probably wouldn’t have made a significant difference to the outcome, it makes you wonder under what circumstances the manager would have ordered a shutoff. What was even the point of his role if he wasn’t empowered to make safety decisions?
my opinion, back then safety was not a big thing, the pressure was on to get production, it always has been. i worked in a timber frame factory from 2017 to 2022 and the amount of new starts that put 90mm nails in there hands was at least twice a year as the pressure is on to get the job done no matter their skill level. in the building trade, there are people that still take risks with their safety because they have done that for decades and never think they will do something wrong. its a difficult attitude to change when you have a manager forcing pressure on employees for production over safety.
it seems obvious now to lock out the pump but back then there was a system, a bad system, that someone has thought out and feels it was a good enough system if everyone followed it. another problem is humans being humans and making mistakes. not every system is full proof, as time goes on the system has tweaks to it as its used and flaws found out. unfortunately multiple flaws happened in the system at the same time the night Piper Alpha went up in flames.
@douglasreid699 exactly. I work on heavy equipment in plants, and on dirt sites. I work around millwrights, iron workers, equipment operators, electricians ect... one day I was on site as I normally am, site mech for our company, and noticed a few iron workers welding galvanized steel. No respirators or ventilation. I told them to stop and get the proper PPE. I was told.to go away as they had been doing this for X number of years and I didn't know what I was talking about. Well I did and so I went to the safety person and told them. They didn't know anything about the health concerns with welding galvanized steel so I explained it to them. They called the safety manager and were told to stop.the work immediately. This work stop caused quite the commotion at the company and the project manager went to the CEO of the company trying to get me fired. In the end I wasn't fired but I was shut out by a lot of the guys working that project for a while. It reminded me that safety is only as good as the workers and the safety people on the site. And even in 2024 workers willingly bypass safety measures for no good reason. All those guys get paid by the hour, have very god union protection against company harassment for stopping work for safety reasons and get more then just the required OSHA training. Yet they all were 100% willing to bypass all of it simply becaise they didn't want to wear a fresh air breathing mask.
As I understand work had not yet begun on the pump itself so it was still regarded to be in workable condition according to its work permit. Due to the fact that the safety valve was at a higher up location and could not be seen from the level of the pump cause it was obscured by machinery and piping + had a completey separate work/safety permit noone but the maintenance workers of the safety valve knew about this. They had written in the valve permit that the pump must not be started under ANY condition but since noone else saw this permit but only the one for the pump wich said that it was ok to start the pump they then proceeded to start it and the disaster was a fact. One thing that could had prevented the disaster would have been if the valve workers had properly wrench tightened the blind they had put over the valve connection but it was only hand tightened, probably so they quickly could resume work next day but that of course meant that this blind served no purpose whatsoever and condensate gas spewed freely from the loosley tighened seal when the pump was turned on. The urgency to get the other pump going was also not just to keep production flowing but since the gas turbine generators providing all power for the entire rig relied on these pumps to provide their fuel they had only a few hours before the generators and thus the entire rig would shut down and they would be forced to do a so called black start wich as I get it could take days to get everything up and running again. The decission from the other platforms to then continue to pump gas to the platform even they could see it was on fire because they were afraid getting fired for not having authority is just crazy! If u see something burning u push the emergency stop immediatley without hesitation! Sure it will take time to start up again but it might had reduced the totally horrific death toll. Human lives are worth nothing however when money is to be made by executive bosses, CEOs and shareholders! Very sad! Greed have caused so many horrible disasters! :(
They did have lock out tag out, the problem was the Pump WAS safe to restart, the VALVE wasn't, and it was in a separate room with a completely separate tagging and paperwork system.
He did legally have enough authority to do so, it just was heavily discouraged and he would have lost his job if Piper ended up with only minor damage.
Small correction Simon. The 'blockage' (known in the industry as a blank flange) was located on a pipe leading to the removed safety valve that branched off the pump discharge line. If it had been properly secured when the pump was turned on, the condensate would've traveled on its merry way without incident (although it's extremely bad practice and often illegal to run a process without appropriate overpressure protection in place). It's highly likely that if this had happened, it would've been noticed by the same technician the following day when the safety valve work was restarted and the situation corrected.
Yep, from my understanding, the PSV blind flanges were only hot bolted, and not torqued properly. If they had been fully bolted and torqued, the system could have been run, albeit as you have said, very VERY bad practice to run without a PSV on the pump discharge line. As long as there were no further blockages to cause a dangerous pressure increase anywhere downstream, they might have gotten away with it, though heads would have rolled the next day when they figured out the missing PSV.
I remember watching this on the news. Years later my dad worked on building it’s replacement. Believe it’s called piper bravo.
Other? This is the only one I know about. One of my most vivid childhood news memories along with Chernobyl and Lockerbie.
He's referencing the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
It's things like this that people ignore when they complain about health & safety.
Or want a bonfire of regulations
I remember this. I was 16.
The news was horrible. It went on for days.
Red Adair was brought in to try to contain it, but it was too late.
Remember when Piper Alpha happened. Was watching the TV & my Mum & Dad were in tears. My Uncle was on it. (They didn't break it to me until later since I was a bairn)
bairn?
@@christophermerlot3366 Scottish for "small child"
Scottish for young child @@christophermerlot3366
@@christophermerlot3366 child
One of my family members was on a nearby platform and they could see the piper alpha in the distance :-(
"Hello, fellow Internet explorers!"
If we're talking old browsers, I always saw myself as more of a Netscape Navigator.
For my induction of my current job we took a deep dive into piper alpha disaster. Platforms claymore and tartan were still pumping to alpha even though they could see the fire in the distance but were afraid to turn off due to the "production is god" culture. The guy giving the induction ended with "what tiny insignificant object could have prevented the disaster a paperclip. To keep the permits together"
Well, I've rarely heard a tale that so perfectly exemplifies the old saying "everything that can go wrong, *will* go wrong." So many countermeasures damaged by the unforeseen explosion, and those that weren't, were just unfortunately turned off at the time of the incident... Truly, a series of unfortunate events, if there ever was one.
I worked for BT at this time, and some of my distant colleagues working on board were killed. We were probably the first people to realise there was a problem when the comms failed.
Lived in Aberdeen for nearly 20 years now, Piper Alpha is something that City will always remember, and still causes a lot of people a lot of grief.
I Drive a lorry so being in Aberdeen a lot is oil industry related, and there is a huge amount if industry that go into testing and checking so much equipment that goes out to the rigs, can sometimes feel ridiculous that you can you can go into one place one day, it gets something done to it, then off to another place then back to the first one, then off somewhere else where it gets packed to go away again easy to forget after a while why, until you remember what happened not far off the coast
The lessons learned from this changed the whole safety regime in the UKCS, which led to the highest standards in the world. Just a pity we only learn fro things going wrong.
We learnt about this at first year of uni and it’s just infuriating how easily the damage could have been reduced
Lost my uncle on the Piper Alpha. Go up to Aberdeen every 6th July to pay my respects. RIP.
This was horrifying at the time. I live in Scotland and at the time a lot of people knew someone who was working "on the rigs" so this really hit home hard. What happened to those poor guys was so sad.
As a firefighter even I can’t imagine the heat from an inferno like this and I’ve experienced fires that melted plastic and paint on firetrucks plus a natural gas main pipeline explosion whose flames could be heard miles away. We staged a mile away from the scene and verbal communication was impossible from the roar of the flame nevermind the heat we felt even at that distance.
I can’t imagine the hell everyone on the Piper Alpha experienced.
1:09 Video Begins
The reason that the other permit wasn't read is because it was actually read but someone was covering their ass.
Fact Boy time, woo hoo!
More minor spills being reported is a GOOD thing. I guarantee there are no more minor spills now than there used to be, but now these spills are being reported more often. This shows a strong safety culture and gives management and regulators the information needed to prevent them from happening.
I'm used to listening to the long form casual criminalist videos and at the end of this I was half expecting you to say and this is the story of the piper alpha disaster
Dad worked offshore at the time, he said Oxy paid the most yet had the highest turnover of staff, something that shouldn't be the case
I knew the youngest guy that died on that unfortunately was playing squash with him (junior league game) a night or 2 before, From what I recall from what he said on that night it was his 1st trip offshore rememeber him being quite excited about it he must hame only been about 17-18 didnt actually know him overly well just what | did from the few times I played him seemed very sureal fro me at just 14-15yrs old remember when the live news of the disaster rolled in it crossing my mind wonder if that was the rig he was on followed by surely not although i never at the time had any idea how many rigs there was I knew there was literally dozens.......Well....Turns out a few days to a week later very much confirmed so....very nice guy such a shame indeed!
People outside of Scotland and sea rescue work are lucky to not know about this. I wasn't even born at the time, but it was part of my education. I even sat in one of the SeaKings after its retirement. And yet, thousands of people from Scotland still work on the rigs because the hazard pay is too enticing.
i am studying to be a ships engineer and this is constantly broiught up in our health and saftey classes
Jesus Christ, I feel so sorry for the crew on board; any one of the things happening is bad but it just seems like it kept getting worse and worse.
I've read about this disaster. The psychological consequences to the survivors were terrible. Lots of continuing survivor's guilt and suicides years later. And at the time Aberdeen's population was only about 202,000. The impact on the community was massive, as many Scottish commenters have pointed out.
This disaster lives rather vividly in my head, along with Chernobyl and Space Shuttle Challenger.
Every rig & platform worker in the Gulf of Mexico has seen the Piper Alpha & Remember Charlie documentary countless times 🤣
Spare a thought for those who perished and those who survived. I was 13 when this occurred. Sounded like horror-show, then . Thanks for the walk-through, now that I've worked in similarly hazardous environments
that memorials on
Bravo , and elsewhere.
You didn’t mention that most of the oil companies, were:
1: telling the rigs to cut costs
2: to NEVER let the rig stop producing oil. By any means.
That maintenance paperwork not being accessible was unacceptable. But this is coming from someone who was trained after the fact.
Terrible situation.
No one in the oil and gas, aviation, nuclear or space industry forgot about it - the basis for safety management systems!
The problem with safety is it's a somewhat nebulas idea in that yes obvious actions can cause disaster (step out into traffic you're likely to get hurt) but small actions/inactions can't be seen as a problem until a chain of other actions/inactions combine to bring about catastrophe, I try to work as safely as possible but even so have had some near misses.
I miss your biographics channel
Wonderful introduction and wonderful technical explanations video...oil fields are contaminating air,soil , and water continuously without feeling of responsibilities toward whole life on the planet. For companies greedy
I am 50 years old. As far as I can tell in the real world, safety and efficiency can never work hand in hand. Every executive will want maximum profit and will hide all the dangers as long as they can.
Worked in the north sea for 12 yrs. safety training and process was drilled into us
Tharos was built specifically to combat out of control rig fires when firefighting on board failed, and while many at the time considered it a publicity/security theater machine(as it was so slow moving it could never respond to a serious threat in time unless it happened to be stationed at that specific rig, and it rotated between them), it was right next to Piper Alpha by sheer chance when the explosion happened. The fact that the Tharos was specifically built for fighting oil fires and was right there and yet still failed to put out the fires is a testimate to the poor training and matinence of it's crews.
Oh and Tharos was later converted(due to it's failures as a firefighting vessel) into a well drilling rig and in 2009 drilled the Macondo Well, which once it left would be tended to in 2010 by...The Deepwater Horizon.
Biggest reason for that was procedure failures by the surrounding rigs that kept pumping all theri oil directly into the fire
@@monkeymagic4555 True, but if you read the reports of that night Tharo's crew did not know what they were doing at all. (Oil supply also was cut off eventually by Claymore and Tartan, it was the gas lines that doomed the rig). The water pumps tripped constantly delaying firefighting, they had issues extending the gangway(which would both make firefighting easier and give them a ladder to evacute stranded men off the rig platform with) and they refused to fight the worst of the fire as they didn't want to hit/flay the people nearby. Seemingly the Tharos wanted to slowly evacuate everyone by Gangway and then fight the fire which there was not time for.
Had the Tharos been game and going and not scared of accidentally skinning a guy or two they were more than capable of keeping the oil fire down enough to protect Tartan's Riser and eventually wait for the oil fire to burn out once the other rigs cut it(which was happening slowly, just not very quickly due to the communication issues). Even after Tartan broke they theoretically could have targeted the heart of that fire and surpressed the worst of the fireball to buy some significant time. It was the failure of MCP-001's monsterously large gas line that ultimately forced Tharos back after killing 2 of their crew and doomed the rig.
Also had both Tharos and the other rigs acted properly that combination would have saved most people. Had the other rigs cut off their stuff immediately there's still a high chance the rig would have been lost as the diving mats sped up the failure rate of the Tartan line way way above what it was supposed to be, and Tharos on it's own facing a fire fed by the other rigs would always be playing defense and not be able to put the fire out. Either on it's own would save some lives absolutely, but both together would have saved most of them. Tharos working properly could easily tie a fire down for 2 or 3 hours, by which point the oil lines would have run empty and the gas lines would have been depressured to a point they'd no longer be at risk of burning.
They could survive a rig which had lost internal firefighting capacity. They could survive a rig who's oil supply wasn't cut-off(albeit they predicted being unable to cut the line to the ocean was more likely than other rigs not cutting off, which in Piper was the opposite, the sea floor line WAS cut). They could survive without external assistance for rescue or firefighting.
Two of these happening at once would kill dozens and dozens of people. All 3 happening at once is what happened to Piper.
I was 9 at the time and living under the flight path to the airport. The lasting memory I still have is the never ending wave after wave of helicopters going to refuel after they had dropped off at ARI to head back out. Everyone knew something was up.
Found out in the days after that our neighbours son died in Piper.
At first I thought this was the Byford event, where those dudes got converted into meat confetti
Only 1 dude. The guys further inside the chamber were seemingly intact. Until they were opened up by medical personell; revealing that their insides were spongy mush.
Thank you. ❤
I got confused at first reading the closed captions when I knew Simon was saying "Pump A" but I ware reading "Pompeii" 😖 Otherwise this story is horrifying.
With all the oil and gas in the North Sea within British territory waters, why is Great Britain over taxed and bankrupt.
Lol ur very rite bout the safety whistle boy safety cost money but u also need the training to make it work
Also Ocean Ranger. Don’t forget Ocean Ranger as well.
A memorial sculpture is located in the Rose Garden of Hazlehead Park in Aberdeen.
"My shift is over. It's not my job to stay a few minutes late and inform my replacement verbally of something incredibly important."
How lucky the Survivors on Piper Alpha were that there was a Medical Conference in Edinburgh attended by the Best of Britain's Burn Injury Surgeons that were close enough on hand to spread around the Hospitals and treat them as soon as the helicopters landed.
For one, a piece of equipment intentionally de-activated should not be able to be turned on from a remote location. Two, leaving pipes and equipment compromised or repairs unfinished, going off your shift, scribbling some vague notes and leaving them on a supervisors desk is irresponsible and complacent. Three, equipment that 'should not be turned on under any circumstances' should be disabled to prevent anyone from turning it on, under any circumstances. Lastly, this is an oil rig. Everyone is there. Maybe buzz the barracks and ask Joey the mechanic, if it's alright to use Pump A.
You missed the most important aspect of the disaster. Because the PA was a hub the other wellheads attached to it never stopped the flow of oil and gas to the PA despite being able to see the massive explosions and fires. They never considered that the oil and gas from their continued production might be what was causing the PA to still be burning.
Funny coincidence, E1999 Eternal by Bone Thugz N Harmony was my favorite album when I was a little 8y/o white kid.
I also really liked Country Grammar, but I was like 15 then (still a goofy white kid).
Remember the Second from Disaster documentary
I work in Aberdeen in the O&G industry....its still a sh*t show today.....
Title is off there are literally memorials throughout aberdeen and over 100+ health and safety regulations put in place after discovery. Piper Alpha disaster is far from forgotten.
I remember piper alpha its what comes to mind when you say oil rig disaster, just like Chernobyl comes to mind when I think of nuclear disaster, and I watch the TV shows about both.