Piper Alpha Disaster
Alpha Piper Disaster
Introduction
The accident, which occurred on board of the seaward platform Piper Alpha in July 1988, took lives of 167 people and cost billions of dollars damage of property. The Piper Alpha is placed in the North Sea, around 193 km northeast of Aberdeen. The field was discovered in January 1973 and the same year construction of platform took place. The depth of it was up to 140 m, and at the time the development and installation of the Piper Alpha platform give tongue to a major step in both the development of the UK offshore resources and technology. The basic design of the topsides was establish on those used in the Gulf of Mexico. The platform production of oil started in December 1976 when the first two wells were brought on-stream. During its primitive life the Piper Alpha platform proved highly productive, producing up to 360 kilo barrels of oil per day. At the time of the disaster, the oil production had dropped to some 125 kilo barrels of oil per day, with many wells containing a high quantity of produced water. The oil was brought up ashore through a sub-sea line 206 km long to the Island of Flotta in the Orkneys for building onshore terminal. The oil production from the Piper Alpha platform contained around 10% of the UK production from the UK area of the North Sea. (1)
The disaster was caused by a massive fire, which wasn’t predicted. Most of them have been implemented in the organization, it’s structure and procedures. This research analyzes the scenario of an accident, using a risk analysis that determines how human decisions and actions affect the occurrence of major events, and then identifies the roots of the organizational decisions and actions. The organizational factors are common to other industrial and technical systems. This include deficiencies in the guidelines for project design and methods such as strenuous physical linkage or insufficient excess, misguided priorities in the management of the exchange between
Introduction
The accident, which occurred on board of the seaward platform Piper Alpha in July 1988, took lives of 167 people and cost billions of dollars damage of property. The Piper Alpha is placed in the North Sea, around 193 km northeast of Aberdeen. The field was discovered in January 1973 and the same year construction of platform took place. The depth of it was up to 140 m, and at the time the development and installation of the Piper Alpha platform give tongue to a major step in both the development of the UK offshore resources and technology. The basic design of the topsides was establish on those used in the Gulf of Mexico. The platform production of oil started in December 1976 when the first two wells were brought on-stream. During its primitive life the Piper Alpha platform proved highly productive, producing up to 360 kilo barrels of oil per day. At the time of the disaster, the oil production had dropped to some 125 kilo barrels of oil per day, with many wells containing a high quantity of produced water. The oil was brought up ashore through a sub-sea line 206 km long to the Island of Flotta in the Orkneys for building onshore terminal. The oil production from the Piper Alpha platform contained around 10% of the UK production from the UK area of the North Sea. (1)
The disaster was caused by a massive fire, which wasn’t predicted. Most of them have been implemented in the organization, it’s structure and procedures. This research analyzes the scenario of an accident, using a risk analysis that determines how human decisions and actions affect the occurrence of major events, and then identifies the roots of the organizational decisions and actions. The organizational factors are common to other industrial and technical systems. This include deficiencies in the guidelines for project design and methods such as strenuous physical linkage or insufficient excess, misguided priorities in the management of the exchange between