The oil and gas industry has seen its share of disasters through the years, but on July 6, 1988, disaster struck the North Sea in a fashion that had never been witnessed at any other time during the history of the industry. The legacy of the Occidental Piper Alpha, which sat 474 feet above the sea floor and was operated by Occidental Petroleum, had come to a tragic end taking 167 souls with it. The oil and gas platform was the most productive in the North Sea at the time it was destroyed by fire. It was the disaster of the Piper Alpha that prompted many changes in the oil and gas industry and exposed what could go terribly wrong if procedures were not to be followed correctly. The disaster has also changed the design of today’s oil platforms, making them safe as possible.
It was only after the “Lord Cullen Report” was finalized that the world would have a better knowledge about the causes that led to the disaster of the Piper Alpha. Although the investigation hit its road bumps with very little physical evidence, eyewitness information and accounts of what led up to the disaster helped to give a clearer picture to investigators. It was through eyewitness accounts that concluded that a cloud of flammable hydrocarbon was released into the air when a relief valve from a pump had been removed for maintenance, and the pump restarted. It was this cloud that eventually would find an ignition source and set off the world’s worst oilfield disaster in history.
To first understand what went wrong with the Piper Alpha, one first must understand what the platform was and what went wrong on that dreadful day in July of 1988. The Piper, which began first producing oil in 1976, was a large fixed platform located 120 miles north of Aberdee...
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...ccidental had been forewarned two years earlier when a study that was ordered by Occidental Petroleum had shown that the gas lines attached to the Piper Alpha were dangerous because of the amount of time that it would take to reduce the pressure if ever needed to do so (Piper Alpha Platform Disaster). Both the Claymore and Tartan should have been shut down immediately following the first call.
Although the world’s worst offshore disaster occurred on July 6, 1988, to this day, 30 bodies have yet to be recovered. A memorial monument pays homage to those souls within the beautiful Rose Garden of Hazlehead Park in Aberdeen, Scotland. It is affixed with three oilfield workers, on top of a tomb, dressed in work clothes and wearing proper protection. It is a true work of art that remembers the lives of just a handful that have worked to bring the world its oil and gas.
So the Carbide investigators disproves the theory. Instead Carbide scientists felt the only way that an amount of water sufficient to cause the observed reaction could have entered the tank was through accidental or deliberate connection of a water hose to the piping that led directly into the tank. Carbide investigators then did a thorough interviews with the plant’s employee and careful examination of plant records along with physical evidence led them to conclude that the cause of the gas leak was sabotage by a disgruntled employee who intentionally hooked a water hose to the tank. From here on we can see whether its an employee ill intention to blame for the whole accident or whether the gas tank model was defective in design because its safety standards were lower than similar Carbide plants in the United States. It conclude that Carbide had consciously permitted inadequate safety standards to exist. Indian prosecutors argued that the managers of UCIL were criminally
In the Macondo blowout case, (Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill), leaders within Transocean and British Petroleum (BP) processed a “by any means necessary” mentality as well. The company cultures promoted doing whatever was possible to enhance profits. This oil leak and explosion, resulted in the loss of 11 lives, destroyed beaches and wetlands, and killed multiple wildlife species. The most telling piece of information throughout this case is that the oil spill and explosion could ...
One major business incident happened in April 2010 shocked the world and caused an “earthquake” of British Petroleum (BP)’s brand image. The Deepwater Horizon oil rig owned by BP in the Golf of Mexico exploded, leading to a disastrous oil spill in this marine area. The maritime disaster caused by the explosion became the largest one in the history of the U.S. and brought huge financial and reputations losses to BP. What is worse, sealing the oil well took over five months. From the explosion of the completion of the sealing (announced by BP), over 780 million gallons of crude oil spilled into the sea, causing irreversible pollution and damage to the bio-system in this area and the world (Lofgren 2013). BP’s response, however, is considered as a crisis communication failure (Heller 2012) by some people and others believe BP’s response was effective (Mejri & de Wolf 2013).
The Ocean Ranger was an offshore exploration oil drilling platform that sank in Canadian waters 315 kilometres southeast from St. John's Newfoundland, on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland on February 15, 1982, with 84 crewmembers onboard. The Ocean Ranger was the largest semi-submersible, offshore exploration, oil drilling platform of the day. Built in 1976 by Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, it operated off the coasts of Alaska, New Jersey, Ireland, and in November 1980 moved to the Grand Banks. Since it was so big it was considered to have the ability to drill in areas too dangerous for other rigs. The government thought it was unsinkable, so they felt that there was no need to train a crew very well.
On March 24 1989, the tanker Exxon Valdez runs aground in Prince Williams sound, Alaska. This was a tragic accident that the company deeply regrets. It all began when the Valdez was traveling towards California when it hit a coral reef. As a result, of this accident, significant quantities of oil began to seep into the waters. According to most, the action to contain the spill was slow. As a result, the media blamed Exxon for not responding fast enough to the crises. Many of the wildlife including birds, fish and other mammals were kill...
British Petroleum (“BP”) is the company that is being blamed for the incident. Employing 80,000 people, BP is an international oil company that puts different technology to use for finding oil and gas under the Earth’s surface. One of the oilrigs, Deepwater Horizon has drilled 35,000 ft. making it to be the deepest drilling of oil and gas (Walsh). Deepwater Horizon was drilling in the Gulf of Mexico about 52 miles southeast of Venice on Louisiana's tip. After the explosion, helicopters searched for 11 crewmembers that reported missing. 17 people were injured (BP Internal Investigation Team). A day later, the rig was found upside down (BP Oil Spill Timeline). The cost to clean up the damage is approximately $760 million (Walsh).
"Soon the 4-inch drill pipe…shot skyward. After the mud, water, and pipe were blown out, gas followed, but only for a short time. Then the well was very quiet. We ventured back, after our wild scramble for safety, to find things in a terrible mess...We started shoveling the mud away-when, without warning, a lot of heavy mud shot out of the well with the report of a cannon…In a very short time oil was going up through the top of the derricks, and rocks were being shot hundreds of feet into the air. Within a very few minutes, the oil was holding a steady flow at more than twice the height of the derrick…”
“On March 23, 2005, at 1:20 pm, the BP Texas City Refinery suffered one of the worst industrial disasters in recent U.S. history. Explosions and fires killed 15 people and injured another 180, alarmed the community, and resulted in financial losses exceeding $1.5 billion.” (U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, 2007) There are many small and big decisions and oversights that led to the incident. Underneath all the specific actions or inaction is a blatant disregard for addressing safety violations and procedures that had been pointed out to BP even years before this event. The use of outdated equipment and budget cuts also contributed to the circumstances that allowed this accident to happen.
Since 2005, PBS reported of four major incidents involving BP. The first incident was an explosion that killed 15 people at BP’s Texas refinery in Texas City. BP did not replace the old blown-down drums, a safety feature, with safer, modern flares to save money. An investigation commissioned by former Secretary of State James Baker concluded that this incident was preventable and BP failed in putting safety as a priority. In the Alaska incident, 260,000 gallons of oil leaked from a BP oil pipeline on Alaska’s North Slope in March, 2006. Later investigations found that BP hired uncertified inspectors and kept records poorly. BP agreed to re-inspect 10,000 points and corrected their problems. In July of 2005, a BP oil platform, called Thunder Horse, toppled after Hurricane Dennis. After an investigation, BP found that their engineers had incorrectly installed a number of valves that supported the rig. On January 2007, the Minerals Management Service cited this accident was caused by human error (PBS). In 2010, the Deep Water Horizon rig exploded, leading to oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. Again BP is ...
On April 20, 2010, the Gulf of Mexico experienced a disaster unprecedented in scale and environmental impact. Fifty miles off the coast of Louisiana in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, a BP drilling rig suffered an explosion that claimed eleven lives and caused the rig to sink over 5000 ft. to the sea bed floor. This was the beginning of the BP oil spill which spanned over eighty seven days, releasing an approximate 2.3 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Although the flow of oil into the Gulf was contained July 15, 2010, the lasting effects of the oil spill on the environment continue to be devastating and widespread. (Kirkwood 1)
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On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, located in the Gulf of Mexico exploded killing 11 workers and injuring 17. The oil rig sank a day-and-a-half later. The spill was referred to as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, BP oil spill, Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and BP oil disaster. It was first said that little oil had actually leaked into the ocean but a little over a month later the estimate was 12,000-19,000 barrels of crude oil being leaked per day. Many attempts were made to stop the leak but all failed until they capped the leak on July 15, 2010, and on September 19 the federal government declared the well “effectively dead.” In the three months that it took to finally put a stop the leak, 4.9 million barrels of oil were released into the ocean. The spill caused considerable damage to marine and wildlife habitats and the Gulf’s fishing and tourism industries. The White House energy advisor, Carol Browner, goes as far to say that the Deepwater oil spill is the “worst environmental disaster the US has faced.”
Winston A, 2010, Five Lessons from the BP Oil Spill, Harvard Business Review, accessed 1 April 2014,
Union Carbide. (2013). Frequently asked questions regarding the Bhopal tragedy of 1984. Retrieved from http://bhopal.com/