A Major Oil Producer
Piper Alpha was part of a chain of important offshore production platforms. It was large and responsible for hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil passing through its pipelines each day. But the speed of production perhaps also held an achilles heel. In the 1980s important construction work such as replacing spools, valves and the like was done 'on-the-fly', that is to say the platform would remain 'live' while full-scale upgrading/replacing activity would be underway. A commercially aggressive system that undoubtably keeps the platform at optimal performance with the minimal of downtime but also one that suddenly and unexpectantly exposed a terrible flaw when multiple events arose and the wrong combination of decisions took place.
Like many tragedies; a combination of faults leading to the terrible a chain reaction of events. At the end of a busy dayshift an engineer going off-shift failed to pass on important information verbally, instead he left the work permit (detailing that a compressor was not to be activated) on the desk next to control room supervisor who absently filed it away.
As the nightshift began, the main compressor suddenly failed. Not wishing for the platforms drilling equipment to fail (very expensive if it did so) the duty control manager searched and found on a different file the secondary compressor was good for operation. It wasn't, the pipework was missing that went to the compressor and the blank section that had been fitted to prevent moisture and gas vapour was only fitted loosely. The compressor was turned on. Within seconds gas began escape from the blanked-off pipework. Several minutes passed and suddenly a source of ignition (possibly welding) triggered a series of catastrophic explosions erupted, killing the first of the workers.
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