Lord Cullen’s t
wo volume report of the Public Inquiry into the Piper Alpha Disaster is available through the HSE’s website and it’s well worth taking the time to read.
It’s astonishing how an initial hydrocarbon release of between 30 and 80 kg escalated to 167 fatalities on 6 July 1988. Unfortunately, there are still releases of this magnitude (and greater) happening in the offshore industry today. Data for 2016 published by the Health & Safety Executive contains 46 hydrocarbon releases of more than 30 kg. Whilst other protective measures are clearly functioning to prevent these from escalating beyond a loss of containment – it is always much safer to prevent the releases occurring in the first place.
Each of these releases provides an opportunity to understand what went wrong and to prevent it happening again.