Twenty-nine years have passed since, on July 6, 1988, the Piper Alpha production platform blew up killing 167 offshore personnel, including two rescue boat crew.
They didn’t stand a chance.
To complete the picture, 61 of those aboard the Occidental-operated installation were rescued and, of those who perished, 30 bodies were never recovered.
On the morning of the disaster I had commuted by bus as usual from Musselburgh in East Lothian to the heart of Edinburgh and my office at the Sea Fish Industry Authority.
Mine was then the world of aquaculture, commercial fishing and light marine contracting and had been for a lot of years, including on West Coast prawn boats.
I hadn’t listened to the news that morning and generally relied on the newspapers being in the office to catch up on headlines.
I was greeted by colleague Brian Eames who was in a grim mood. He said a giant North Sea rig had blown up and a lot of offshore workers had been killed.
I tore through the papers, paying particular attention to The Press and Journal as it was always the best for fisheries and oil news.
On with the TV where reporters were clearly struggling to cope with the horror of what had happened.
I felt the tragedy acutely. Fishermen had by then experienced a lot of Big Oil’s arrogance, but there was an empathy with the guys who had to live offshore … mostly ‘toonsers’ (city guys) in an alien world … and who had little idea how dangerous the North Sea could be.
But there was another dimension for me … my experience in maritime emergency response.
I had served in HM Coastguard … initially as an auxiliary then, some years later, going through full training and establishment at the Aberdeen Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre from January 1983 through June 1985 at which point I returned to the world of fisheries having received an offer from the management journal World Fishing that I simply could not refuse.
My time at Aberdeen MRCC was intensive and dominated by the then still quite new oil & gas industry.
The ops room’s massive plot board was peppered with offshore installations and rigs on the move. It was a dynamic time under the then regional controller Derek Ancona who was ex Royal Navy and, by the way, was responsible for introducing helicopters into HMCG; the rescue tugs too.
I rapidly picked up on oil industry attitudes towards safety at the time and to say that it was frequently patronising … condescending … dismissive … is probably an understatement. And the Department of Energy also oversaw offshore safety at the time!!!!
Colleague watch officers would frequently complain about the oilco’s and, given that some had been Master Mariners prior to stepping ashore to take a job on terra firma, they knew what they were talking about.
That experience in the UK maritime safety machine remains vivid and always will be.
As a result, throughout the early stage of the Piper Alpha disaster, I was mentally in Aberdeen MRCC and reflecting on the inevitability of what had happened.
At the end of 1989 I, in effect, changed my life by joining the P&J to take on the energy desk because the subject fascinated me.
This was Cullen Inquiry time but I did not disclose my safety-related provenance to the P&J or the offshore sector either then or for many years.
I clocked an industry that had been caught with its pants down. It very well knew what had to be done. It didn’t need to wait for Cullen. And, even before the inquiry’s findings were published, it had spent many £billions on safety stuff that should have been done right at the start of the North Sea.
Little wonder safety was wrested away from the Department of Energy and into the hands of the HSE whose own approach to policing the North Sea has also been somewhat inconsistent, shall I say.
The newly created Offshore Safety Division under Tony Barrell made a determined, well-funded start. Barrell was a good communicator but, by 2013 and several divisional chiefs later, the HSE had become a different animal.
At one point we had to resort to the Freedom of Information (FOI) process in the hope that we will get answers to simple questions that would have in the past been answered directly and quickly. I never did receive a proper response, IMO.
The only ray of light and all too briefly was Susan MacKenzie who shook things up a great deal during her all too brief tenure.
Several years ago I began fretting about the loss of corporate memory of safety-critical incidents and lessons learned.
A generation is currently 25 years. But what is a corporate generation? That’s far less. But is it five years, or seven or 10 or what?
I think it’s about 10 years but no-one seems to know. On that basis, that’s all but three generations of management that have passed through the North Sea machine since Piper Alpha.
There’s US research that suggests an average CEO’s “life expectancy” at the top is less than five years. I suspect it’s not that different in the UK.
But it still amounts to at least about SIX change-outs of North Sea CEOs in every significant company since Piper Alpha.
As for the shop-floor, I cannot even begin to guess.
Then there is the added complexity of corporate lifespan, bearing in mind that many companies active in the North Sea at the time of Piper have left, merged, been taken over or have died, plus there are many newcomers. All are cutting costs and many offshore workers are both disenfranchised and worried.
Layered over this are changes to the HSE itself. Some seem to be pretty fundamental and one wonders how strong the North Sea commitment and understanding are.
And, under the current Tory government and, as a result of endless austerity cuts during the Cameron/Osborne years, I’d be very worried about that. Just look at the fallout from the Grenfell tower block tragedy in London.
We cannot afford another Piper Alpha! But the clock is ticking.
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