A tribunal heard yesterday that a boat which crashed into a North Sea rig had “the capacity to take out the platform and all the people on it.”
Oil and gas industry giant Apache, which has a number of installations off the coast of the north-east, entered its third day of appeal against an improvement order served on it by the Health and Safety Executive.
The order was issued by the HSE following an investigation into an incident on March 16 last year, when the 291ft Sea Falcon supply vessel collided with Apache’s Forties Echo platform, around 110 miles from Aberdeen.
Nobody was hurt in the incident, but 15 personnel had to be evacuated.
The notice instructed Apache to improve the way that it monitors and directs all vessels within the 1,640ft (500m) “safety zone” surrounding the installation.
This action was taken after an HSE team found the Forties Echo platform was unaware of the vessel, despite it travelling at speeds of up to eight times the recommended limit for the area.
Yesterday, the tribunal heard from John Robertson, an HSE inspector who was heavily involved in the investigation in Aberdeen.
Representing Apache, solicitor Peter Gray argued to the tribunal that the severe action of delivering an improvement notice to HSE was not proportional.
However, Mr Robertson responded that he and his team agreed that a notice was appropriate because of the size of the risk created by Apache.
Mr Robertson said: “When you consider that the vessel had the capacity to take out the platform – and all the people on the platform – I considered this to be a very serious incident from the outset.”
The tribunal will resume on April 18 due to scheduling issues.
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