Piper Alpha Disaster

Lord Bruce of Bennachie Excerpts

Thursday 11th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)]

I am pleased to take part in this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) on securing it. Indeed, I acknowledge all the work he has done, both inside and outside the House over many years, to campaign on safety in the oil and gas industry.

Like the hon. Gentleman, I was at the memorial service in Aberdeen, on a sunny morning last Saturday in the memorial garden. I was moved perhaps more than I expected to be, particularly when the families were invited to come up with their wreaths—we are talking about 400 people. Watching young adults, who were obviously babies when their fathers were killed, holding up tiny children just to touch the names of the granddads they never knew brought home to me in a personal way just what a human tragedy this was.

I was on a trade and industry visit to Romania at the time. It is worth recording the fact that the incident was all over before I had even heard about it. There was no e-mail and no mobile phones. I felt a long way from my people who were suffering and unable to do very much—although to be honest, I am not sure that that is when Members of Parliament are at their most useful. What we did have to do, obviously, was provide support to the families and the bereaved, ensure a process that would get to the bottom of what was wrong, and put in place mechanisms and a culture to ensure it would never happen again.

Oil and Gas UK and its contractors produce figures from time to time. Usually, my constituency has the highest or second highest number of people working in the industry. It is important to remember, 25 years on, that the industry is still huge. It is still the driver of our economy. Although a 100% guarantee of safety is never possible, there are still thousands of people working or travelling offshore who need the assurance that everything is being done to ensure that safety is paramount.

A number of the events around the 25th anniversary have illuminated the fact that there are still some worrying cultural problems, to which the hon. Member for Aberdeen North alluded. He talked about the danger of a top-down approach. My instinct is that I genuinely believe top management when they say to me, “Safety is paramount.” They believe that that is what drives their culture. The problem is that people down the line have a dilemma. Their job is to produce oil and gas. If somebody says, “I’ve got a problem,” or, “I’ve got an anxiety,” there is a tension. Bob Keiller, the chief executive of the Wood Group, made an impressive speech at a dinner a couple of weeks ago in Aberdeen, in which he highlighted that dilemma. His view was: “Safety is paramount—period.”

That is crucial, but it is worth making the point—Maersk is a good example of this—that safety is paramount because there is a moral responsibility to ensure that people get back to their families, but in the end, if a company does not act, its commercial viability will be destroyed. Whoever hears of Occidental in this part of the world now? Indeed, after the Macondo and Texas disasters, one more disaster would be the end of BP. Had Total not got on top of Elgin, it would have been the end of Total. I give the company credit for the work it did and for not rushing back into production until it was fully satisfied that it was on top of things.

I noticed in the very good documentary that was shown on the BBC this week that one of the men said, “We always thought that the biggest risk in this job was the journey to and from the rig,” and that is still the case. It is ironic that only yesterday the Civil Aviation Authority said that it is ready to give clearance for Super Pumas to come back into operation. I think there will be a great deal of caution and reservation about that, and nobody should be getting into a Super Puma until everybody is sure that everything possible has been double-checked to ensure a proper degree of safety.

We should recognise that this is a dangerous environment and that a culture of safety must be paramount. Nobody at any level should ever think twice about stopping production if there is the remotest concern about safety—it is in the best moral and commercial interests of their organisation. If anything can be learned from Piper Alpha and the excellent Cullen report, it must be that.