Piper Alpha Disaster

Anas Sarwar Excerpts

Thursday 11th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Frank Doran (Aberdeen North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the 25th anniversary of the Piper Alpha disaster.

On the night of 6 July 1988, an incident occurred on the Piper Alpha platform that led to the deaths of 167 men. It was the worst tragedy in the offshore oil and gas industry anywhere in the world. It was the direct consequence of negligence, bad management at every level, poor maintenance, extremely weak regulation and failure to have proper work systems in place or a proper safety strategy for major incidents. The regulation management and safety systems failed at every level. Those 167 men died, survivors suffered the most traumatic experience that any of us could imagine, many of them being seriously injured, and of course the families and relatives of those involved have been irrevocably damaged.

I am very pleased and proud to have the opportunity to open this debate to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Piper Alpha tragedy and to remember those who died and their families, and, of course, the rescue services involved and those who supported the survivors and families after the incident. As well as the Piper Alpha victims, it is important to remember all those who have died during the lifetime of the UK oil and gas industry, whether at sea, on land, on a platform, or on transport.

Last Saturday, along with several hundred others, I attended a memorial service in the Piper Alpha memorial rose garden in Aberdeen. I met many of the survivors and the families of victims. I was delighted to see the Secretary of State for Scotland and the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (Margaret Curran), at that event representing the Government and the Opposition. Four hundred of those who attended were survivors or families of victims. Most of the individuals and families have moved on, but the mood on Saturday was as sombre as the mood in 1988. It was quite clear that for most of the people involved the memory of the horror of that day in 1988 remains just as vivid and distressing as it was then. The pain does not go away. Many things stand out about that service, but the most poignant and difficult was the roll call of victims—as graphic and emotional a way of underlining the sheer scale of the tragedy as any.

The 25th anniversary of the tragedy has had a good deal of media coverage, and it does not serve any real purpose to go through again all the detail of what happened on that night. However, I would like to focus on just a couple of issues relevant to the present and possibly also to the future.

As colleagues are well aware, following the disaster Lord Cullen was appointed to lead an inquiry into the disaster. He made 106 recommendations. The Cullen report was welcomed on all sides. It has changed the safety culture in the North sea and throughout the global oil and gas industry. Aside from the practical workplace and management issues, the most important recommendation was on the question of who should be the regulator. From the beginning of the North sea industry, the Piper and all other North sea installations were regulated by the then Department of Energy. The Department had two fundamental problems. The first was the conflict between its responsibility to maximise oil production and its duty as a regulator. More importantly, the Cullen report made the Department’s inadequacies abundantly clear. Cullen recommended that responsibility for offshore safety should be handed over to the Health and Safety Executive, where it resides today.

In the main, the HSE, through its offshore division, has been a good regulator, and there has been substantial improvement in the industry’s safety record. Recently, however, concerns were raised when the HSE announced that the offshore division was being merged into a new energy division. The announcement was made without any apparent consultation with the industry, unions or Members of Parliament. That raised concern on all sides, particularly as to whether the decision was driven by cuts in funding. However, we eventually received from the chair the rationale for the move. Ministers also came in with a promise of some extra inspectors.

The most recent information I have on staffing in the offshore division is that it has 109 full-time equivalent staff—14 more than 2010, so that is significant progress. However, across the HSE the total number of inspectors has fallen by 75 from 1,316 to 1,241. In future, with a merged division, it might be much more difficult for us to identify the precise numbers of dedicated offshore inspectors. Broadly speaking, there has been a steady improvement in the safety regime and in accident rates, but the industry remains dangerous compared with other UK industries. In 2011-12 the fatality rate was 6.9 per 100,000 workers compared with 0.6 for all UK workers. The major injury and fatality rate per 100,000 workers for offshore oil and gas is 130.8, compared with 90.4 for all UK workers. However, at a major event last week, a representative of one of the major oil companies cited a statistic suggesting that, on the basis of last year’s figures, the industry was the third safest, behind banking and education, but I have not seen that information.

Beyond safety, the other major issue facing the industry is the continuing problem of gas escapes on offshore platforms. We should remember that a gas leak led to the Piper Alpha tragedy. In 2011-12, there were 94 hydrocarbon releases, 44 of which were classified as significant. Nine of those were identified as a major incident, which is a leak that, if ignited, would cause an explosion capable of causing multiple casualties. Those nine cases were therefore very serious incidents. Last year, the Elgin-Franklin complex, which is operated by Total, was closed down because of a major gas leak. It was restarted, but then shut down again, and it was not fully operational until March this year. Gas leak statistics, like those for injury rates, are showing a steady improvement, but the volume of escapes and the scale of the Elgin-Franklin problem show that there is still a lot of work to do.

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he agree that one life lost is one life too many, and that that is why all the authorities and companies must work together to achieve maximum safety and security for all those working in such dangerous places to ensure that no life is lost in the future?

[Mr Doran]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. A successful process is in operation, but there is no room for complacency.