Safety is very much in the headlines just now, not least because of the mass grounding of commercial aircraft in Europe because of the currently active Icelandic volcano, and which was, for several days, from the perspective of an aviation turbine, not good news.
Tighten focus in on the North Sea and there is heightened awareness regarding North Sea helicopter transfers for the same reason. Coupled with this are last year’s crashes and, just a few days back, Oil & Gas UK’s first ever safety awards lunch.
One way or another, maritime-related safety has rarely been out of my thoughts since, in my early-20s, I rebelled and went commercial fishing and operating workboats for a period of 12 years, mostly off the Scottish west coast, plus I gained my “establishment” with HM Coastguard at the Aberdeen Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Aberdeen.
Selling my last commercial vessel in June 1985, I basically opted for a life writing primarily about maritime matters – commercial fisheries, hundreds of vessel reviews, the world of upstream offshore oil&gas, plus renewables. And every step of the way, safety has been in there somewhere – including writing about it.
One thing that has therefore been clear to me for several decades is that, if you are at sea (on a vessel or fixed installation, it really doesn’t matter) and there is a major incident that forces evacuation, ultimately one will use every route at one’s disposal to survive. And, as those who escaped from Piper Alpha would tell you, if that means jumping from a great height into the sea, then so be it.
One of my earliest offshore-related safety technology encounters was the Donut, a self-contained, simple, last-ditch device to enable one to escape from a platform in trouble. The demo took place on the Ninian Central platform in the early-1990s courtesy of Chevron and Danny Constantinis, of EM&I.
I’ve written about free-fall boats – pluses and minuses – standby vessels (ERRVs), new classes of helicopter, the FROG transfer device that can double up as an escape route if needs be and is slung from a crane, and so on.
However, it never occurred to me until very recently when I got into a conversation with the guy behind FROG and a family of other crane-slung personnel transfer devices, Phil Strong, that the cranes on UK offshore installations are discounted from the various means considered appropriate to facilitate emergency evacuation of an offshore installation.
That I find rather puzzling given that the crane (with transfer basket or whatever) is considered to be a valid tool to use by some other countries, among them Canada. OK, they don’t have many installations, but the likes of Hibernia, White Rose and Terra Nova are located in very hostile, iceberg-ridden waters.
I am advised that, in Canada, crane-based evacuation is given “risk-based priority” over lifeboats and other means. A crucial fact that has been widely overlooked is that many lives (arguably hundreds) have been saved by crane-based evacuation over the decades.
Strong reminded me that, in 2001, when damage due to an explosion threatened the Brazilian floating production unit, P-36, operator Petrobras evacuated 138 of the installation’s crew by crane, and another 24 via helicopter, before the vessel finally sank.
I accept that, in the early days of the European offshore industry, personnel transfer by crane gained a negative image. But the understanding is that the perception of risk was often distorted and a lack of focus and investment in this area added strongly to these negative perceptions.
Of course, one should not forget that, in the North Sea, personnel transfer by crane was not adopted as a solution for routine logistical operations because sea transportation of offshore installation crews was the rubbish option when compared with the speed and relative ease of using helicopters.
Strong is of the view that it is regrettable that the position on logistical transfers so strongly coloured views on the role of personnel transfers for emergency situations in the North Sea that crane-based evacuation in an emergency is not on the official list of how to get the hell off a distressed platform in a hurry.
He reckons that evacuation to a vessel by crane can offer a flexible, low-risk, reversible and dry solution.
Moreover, it is an option that is immediately available under the OIM’s (offshore installation manager’s) control.
Of course, there will be occasions when it might be impossible to use a crane anyway, and one is total power failure. Another could be that the amount and location of damage could render usage impossible. But other means of escape could be rendered useless, too.
The Canadians are proof that cranes work. Moreover, if evacuating to a supply boat or ERRV, the likelihood these days is that said vessel will be equipped with a dynamic-positioning system and can hold station close alongside with relative ease.
In a nutshell, today’s OSVs are supreme machines – they are designed to manoeuvre in close, keep station and provide a stable platform for cargo lifts, even in harsh conditions.
Also bear in mind that cargo loads do not have in-built shock-absorbing suspension systems, so there is an argument that a well designed transfer capsule can operate in emergencies in conditions beyond any cargo-handling envelopes.
Strong has played around with pushing that particular envelope. He told me that his testing programmes assume up to five metres mean significant wave heights and enable escape 90% of the time. In the North Sea context, though, it is clearly recognised that the East and West Shetland sectors can be much worse than the Central sector; even more so when compared with the Southern Gas Basin or Irish Sea.
In short, it looks as if the time is right to look again at the escape options and perhaps be more open-minded. I, for one, can see Strong’s point.