On the morning after the Piper Alpha explosion in 1988, I went offshore for a couple of weeks working directly for Occidental running an ROV survey and inspection spread.
The main jobs we had to do were to determine the state and stability of the remains of the jacket structure, locate and plot various items, check for oil leaks around the risers and – most important of all – search for and recover from the seabed as many of the victims’ bodies as we could find.
Looking back now, it was probably the most harrowing couple of weeks I’d ever spent offshore. On the other hand, though, it was also very rewarding because every victim the team recovered meant a family somewhere received what, in the modern idiom, we now call “closure”.
I’d been involved in the recovery of bodies before, but this was very different, both in terms of the numbers involved and the general scale of the “incident” itself. It’s not an experience I’d care to repeat, and I’m sure the ROV team, surveyors and the ship’s crew, whose dedication and skill I shall always appreciate, will feel the same.
However, although I have a very clear memory of what went on offshore then, one of the things I certainly don’t remember was anyone turning that whole sad affair into an anti-American rant or an anti-oil campaign.
There was certainly anger towards Occidental, the Piper Alpha operator, but I really do not remember that there was anything resembling the reaction there has been against BP.
The BP incident with the blowout of a well on its Macondo prospect in the Gulf of Mexico, and subsequent explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, has led to an entirely different form of reaction, and it’s one which, I have to say, I find deeply concerning.
Let’s be clear, shall we? Loss of life is never acceptable and the families of the 11 who died on the Deepwater Horizon have as much right as the families of the 167 who were killed on Piper Alpha to know exactly what happened and how it happened – and, of course, the industry needs to know as well.
Loss of livelihood because of the subsequent oil leak ruining people’s businesses around the Gulf of Mexico and the damage done to the environment and all its inhabitants is bad news, but at least this is repairable or can be compensated for.
Establishing the technical reasons for the Macondo blowout will involve an investigative process that can take place as it did post-Piper Alpha with the Cullen Inquiry, which was initiated a few months after the disaster.
That inquiry came up with the causes of the accident and was highly critical of Occidental, which was found guilty of having inadequate maintenance and safety procedures, although no criminal charges were ever brought against it.
The inquiry also made 106 recommendations for changes to safety procedures, all of which the industry accepted. It also led to the responsibility for safety inspection and regulation in the North Sea being moved from the old Department of Energy to the Health and Safety Executive in order to avoid any possible conflict of interest. The result has been that safety in the North Sea has become a priority issue and raising its profile has, itself, led to fewer incidents.
I think it’s entirely reasonable to say, therefore, that the whole Piper Alpha episode was responded to in a very grown-up and measured manner. The Occidental management seemed to act fairly responsibly, and so did the UK Government authorities.
Sadly, though, in the case of the Deepwater Horizon incident, the attitude of the US government, some American commentators and, to an extent, BP itself can in no sense be described as grown-up, and certainly hasn’t been measured.
In contrast, the approach taken by UK Oil & Gas, which has been to set up the UK Oil Spill Prevention and Response Group to “provide a focal point for the sector’s review of the industry’s practices in the UK in advance of the conclusion of investigations into the Gulf of Mexico incident”, was exactly the right thing to do and is the sort of measured approach we need.
Now, let me say at this point that I am no great fan of BP. In the late-1990s, its influence on the Oil & Gas Industry Taskforce cost me a job that I loved doing when they killed off the Centre for Marine and Petroleum Technology, making 25 people redundant, and replaced it with the Industry Technology Facilitator.
But I shall always remember being told by the BP bagman tasked with being its taskforce rep that, actually, BP didn’t need CMPT or ITF because if it wanted to do any R&D then the company would just do it.
So setting up ITF was all about politics and money, and those factors still seem to dominate BP’s thinking.
All that said, I believe the attitude being taken towards BP by the US government and certain sections of the US media is verging on the ridiculous. BP may deserve some kicking, especially over the amateurism of its PR response. However, some of Hayward’s stupid remarks apart, how on Earth did BP think it was going to get away with having Photoshopped some of its official images.
There is no other way of describing this but as “dishonest”, and if BP can attempt to pull the wool over our eyes like this, people are, rightly or wrongly, going to be asking what else it is hiding.
The problem for us in the UK is that this is our biggest oil&gas company and it’s making itself look not just stupid, but completely unethical, and that’s now rubbing off on the rest of us.
Worse, its behaviour is opening a large can of worms. If it hadn’t behaved in the way it has, would it have led to this latest set of questions over whether BP attempted to influence the Libyan prisoner-transfer deal? Now, instead of us having a Piper Alpha-style, calm and collected inquiry into what happened on the Deepwater Horizon, we are faced with the consequences of what happens when a company loses both its direction and control.
BP has managed to annoy just about everyone so much that the chances of it getting an unbiased hearing when the inquiry eventually starts are probably close to zero. This wretched affair has even led to the possibility of interference from the EU in the shape of a moratorium on new drilling on the UKCS, which would be disastrous for the UK economy.
I would like BP to be a company we can be proud of again, but I don’t think that’s going to be achieved without a major shake-up of its management team and its board which goes well beyond the simple replacement of Tony Haywood with another BP insider, Bob Dudley.
BP needs a new strategy, a new set of principles and a complete change to its ethos, and it needs to get on with it. Whether Dudley is the right guy to do all that is something that only time will tell, but he’s another oil man with an MBA whereas perhaps what BP really needs is an “energy man” with some vision.
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