The Piper Alpha Oil Rig Disaster – How accidents make us safer

Brief introduction
On the 6th of July of 1988, an accumulated cocktail of bureaucratic failures, inadequate safety systems and poor workplace culture of prioritising profit over safety would destroy the Piper Alpha oil rig. Prior to the explosions, a routine maintenance on a safety valve which was supposed to be completed during the day shift, was incomplete by the time the night shift took over (Reid 2020). During the night shift, the active pump used at the time tripped and stopped working (Reid 2020). With the stresses to ensure the extraction of crude oil was not disrupted by the maintenance, the reserve pump was re-enabled for use despite a now faulty safety valve since a temporary flange was used to seal the pipe for maintenance purposes (Reid 2020). The flange was not designed for operational oil pressures and would start the chain of events resulting in the destruction of the oil rig (Reid 2020).

Effects on the environment
Surprisingly, in the writing of this blog post, research on the environmental impacts caused by the ruptured and burning oil rig provided little to no results, with most existing literature focusing on techniques to prevent a similar disaster from ever occurring. This difficulty also illustrates how less well-known incidents are given less research attention as compared to high-profile cases, for example, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill accident, which also resulted in the destruction of the oil rig.

Figure 1: Images of the burning Piper Alpha oil Rig (source: (Turner 2013))

While the destruction of an oil rig poses potentially serious environmental effects, the destruction of the Piper Alpha oil rig could be argued to be actually beneficial for the environment in the long term by means of preventing such pollution-inducing accidents. This particular accident sparked renewed interest in the importance of safe designs and also triggered reviews into how to ensure such accidents should never occur again. By preventing such accidents from ever occurring, it would also benefit the environment since such oil products would not enter the environment in such large quantities. With humanity still stubbornly dependent on crude oil for various purposes, preventing such accidents is one less burden on the environment.
With the release of the Cullen report, they released over 106 recommendations for the industry to adopt in order to prevent a future accident that occurred at Alpha Piper (Singh, et al. 2009). The results from the public inquiry into the Piper Alpha accident, lessons and recommendations from the report were taken seriously by the UK oil industry, with safety-related issues “significantly reduced by some 75%; a major achievement” (Singh, et al. 2009). A safer industry will indirectly benefit the environment since accidents that would exacerbate pollution become preventable if safe practices are created and adhered to.

References
Reid, Marc. 2020. “The Piper Alpha Disaster: A Personal Perspective with Transferrable Lessons on the Long-Term Moral Impact of Safety Failures.” ACS Chemical Health & Safety (ACS Publications) 27: 88 – 95. doi:https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chas.9b00022.

Singh, Binder, Paul Jukes, Bob Wittkower, and Ben Poblete. 2009. “Offshore Integrity Management 20 Years On—Overview of Lessons Learnt Post Piper Alpha.” Offshore Technology Conference. Houston: Offshore Technology Conference. 1 – 30.

Turner, Julian. 2013. Sea change: offshore safety and the legacy of Piper Alpha. August 20. Accessed January 2023, 30. https://www.offshore-technology.com/features/feature-piper-alpha-disaster-anniversary-offshore-safety/#:~:text=Three%20further%20explosions%20caused%20by,bodies%20have%20never%20been%20recovered.