It is considered as the worst offshore catastrophe in the world that killed 167 people. This disaster happened due to the explosion and fire of the Piper Alpha platform in the United Kingdom in 1988. The disaster has caused by a combination of different causes including human factors. However, this disaster has led to many changes across the world in the field of safety regulations in order to improve safety in different fields.
Background
In 1972, four companies have joined after obtaining the necessary license to exploring under the North Sea for oil and gas. The joint venture companies discovered oil in early 1973. The discovered oil was in an area called Piper Field which is about 120 miles on the north east side of Aberdeen.
There were three oil platforms in the area, which were Piper Alpha, Tartan, and Claymore platforms. These platforms were sending oil to the near oil terminal in the Orkney Islands, mainly at Flotta through an undersea pipeline. The terminal started to produce oil in 1976 and gas in 1980. However, the production of these two products and carrying them between platforms and the main oil terminal were complicated and thus resulted in the later disaster.
The Piper Alpha Platform
Two manufacturers built the Piper Alpha platform, McDermott Engineering and UIE. Building the platform was not an easy task; especially the potential location of the platform was to be built in the water. The project had to be built in sections at the location of each manufacturer before amalgamating the two parts at the McDermott Engineering location at Ardersier. Then, in 1975, the platform was installed on its location in the water.
Considering safety, the initial design of the platform was satisfactory...
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... qualifications of the managers
• Workers are not trained properly
Lord Cullen had recommended some recommendations on how to improve and prevent such a disaster on the offshore projects. His recommendations as follow:
• Permit to work system is very important and should be considered critical by workers especially during maintenance
• Management should provide proper training to their workers on safety and emergency situation
• Fire walls should be replaced by blast walls
There are some lessons learned from such a disaster such as:
• The quality of managing safety is very vital
• Auditing is critical
• Training for all workers are essential
• Communication between workers especially among maintenance workers
OSHA related standards:
• “OSHA 29 CFR 1910.119”
• “OSHA 29 CFR 1926.803”
• “OSHA 29 CFR 1926.64”
• “OSHA 29 CFR 1926.350”
• “OSHA 29 CFR 1926.153”
On March 15, 1979, the British Tanker Kurdistan, owned by the Nile Steamship Co. Ltd. of Newcastle, England, was bound from Point Tupper, NS, to Quebec City loaded with 29,662 tons of "Bunker C" fuel oil. At 2:20pm, when situated 50 nautical miles northeast of Sydney, Cape Breton, the tanker, lashed by gale force wind, in ice-infested water, developed vertical gashes below the waterline in the number 3 wing tanks. These tanks, which had a total capacity of 10,000 tons, soon began to leak oil.
With $1,000 saved and another $1,000 borrowed form his father, Rockefeller formed a partnership in commission business with Maurice B. Clark. In the same year the first oil well was drilled at Titusville in western Pennsylvania, give a rise to the petroleum industry. Cleveland soon became a major refining center of he booming new industry. In 1863 Rockefeller and Clark entered the oil business as refiners. With Samuel Andrews as their new partner they named the company Andrews, Clark & Co. In 1865 the partnership was broke because of disagreement in management. Rockefeller bought the Company for $72,500 and with Andrews it was named Rockefeller & Andrews.
At the end I come to conclusion that BP was not properly prepared for any disaster like that there risk assessment related to project is very limited and even not considered seriously about it for their own progress and putting live of public and employees in danger by not following the standard SOP of particular project. Even after incident happened they try to close their eyes on reality. The company should take this incident as alarm and should implement proper risk assessment for future and also compensate damages on ethical ground and if they counter this situation in good way their loss of bad reputation will be lesser as it predicted to be they should considered their responsibility towards society as well by doing this they not only making other people lives better but also earning good will to their company.
Oil has always been a coveted natural resource. Oil was discovered in the United States in 1859; since it was a young industry, it was without any structure. That is where John Davison Rockefeller stepped in. John Rockefeller was at one point one of the richest men in the world, monopolizing the oil industry which played a major role in shaping the economy.
The disaster that took place on the Ocean Ranger had a very large effect on the way Newfoundlander's feel about the gas and oil industry. The government examined the safety issues that led to this disaster and has implemented numerous changes to enhance the safety of the offshore workforce. The Newfoundland and Canadian government set up a combined royal commission to investigate the disaster of the Ocean Ranger and to provide recommendations to improve safety. Two years after the disaster, the royal commission on the Ocean Ranger disaster concluded that the deaths resulted not only from the storm and flaws in the rig's design, but also from a lack of human knowledge.
Oil was first discovered in the mid-seventeenth century by Spanish explorers. July of 1543 Spanish explorer Luis de Moscoso saw oil floating on the water in the Galveston Bay (Olien 1). In the beginning there was no market or demand for oil until following the Civil War period, entrepreneurs begin digging wells. The first significant oil discovery in Texas was in 1894 in Navarro County near
The analysis in this report will include a summary of the sequence of events leading up to the disaster, analysis of the professional ethical behaviours and responsibilities that were compromised, and finally the lessons learned and recommendations to avoid such future disasters.
“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.
"Spindletop - the Birth of the Modern Oil Industry." Petroleum Education: The History of Oil. The Paleontological Research Institution, 2010. Web. 02 Apr. 2011.
After the accident, a full-scale investigation was launched by the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). It concluded that the accident was caused by metal fatigue exacerbated by crevice corrosion, the corrosion is exacerbated by the salt water and the age of the aircraft was already 19 years old as the plane operated in a salt water environment.
One of the most significant environmentally damaging instances in history was the Chernobyl incident. In 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant in Ukraine exploded. It became one of the most significant disasters in the engineering community. There are different factors that contributed to the disaster. The personnel that were tasked with operating the plant were unqualified. The plant’s design was a complex one. The RBMK reactor was Soviet design, and the staff had not be acquainted with this particular design. As the operators performed tests on the reactor, they disabled the automatic shutdown mechanism. After the test, the attempt to shut down the reactor was unsuccessful as it was unstable. This is the immediate cause of the Chernobyl Accident. It later became the most significant nuclear disaster in the history of the
East oil seeped through the ground and it was used in many ways. It was
A further look at facts of the incident, analysis of the risk management issues and evaluation and recommendation of BP’s response to the crisis will be presented in this report.
Royal Dutch Petroleum. In the 1930’s Shell started exploring for oil in Africa. It was not
Employee rights are very important in the workplace (Rakoczy, C. n.d.). There are some laws to protect employee rights such as safe working environment, discrimination and overtime pay rate to ensure every employee treated fairly. All employees have the right to work in a safe and healthy workplace. In some industries, they use the high-voltage of electricity, extreme temperature, the high-speed and noisy machine in their workplace which can potentially threat to employee health and safety. A safety and healthy workplace must provide reasonable daily and weekly job schedule to the employees. Therefore, when the employee follows the job schedule, they can prevent to work overload because of a systematic system applied by the company.