The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Australia could see Piper Alpha disaster
Oil & gas: Union warns cuts compromising safety Down Under
An Australian trade unionist and safety representatives, who is currently locked in a David v Goliath battle with an oil giant, has claimed his country is “on the cusp” of a disaster similar to Piper Alpha.
Troy Carter of the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU) and 230 of his co-workers are currently embroiled in a 470-day protest with ExxonMobil over a cut to wages and annual leave.
Mr Carter visited Aberdeen yesterday to meet city councillors and north-east union members, and is due to lay a wreath at the Piper Alpha memorial in Hazlehead Park today.
The safety rep is convinced standards have dropped dramatically in the Australian offshore sector, with oil firms looking to cut corners and save costs, most notably with staff pay and asset repairs.
Mr Carter said: “They’re jeopardising and putting people’s lives at risk. We had Piper Alpha, which was 30 years ago, and we’re headed down that same path.
“These facilities had a 40-year lifespan, we’ve gone over the 40 years now and some of the wall thicknesses on those pipes are paper thin. They’re not even replacing them these days – they’re using these engineered wraps.
“Once these wraps are on, the operator says ‘We mitigated the risk.’”
Mr Carter claims his treatment by Exxon at its Gippsland site in Victoria is an example of the firm “exploiting a loophole” in his country’s Fair Works Act.
As a result, the union delegate has been locked in a protracted conflict with the firm.
Mr Carter added that a lot of Australian health and safety regulations came about as a result of the Cullen Report which followed the Piper Alpha disaster, which caused the deaths of 267 men in July 1988.
He said: “That’s our fear. We can foresee, now that there’s a full-scale workforce out there now, that something will happen.
“We used to have people start and we’d mentor them. Essentially they have removed all the mentors and they’re putting people straight into these jobs who have no experience.”
In Aberdeen, RMT regional organiser Jake Molloy said: “It’s being played out around the world, this geopolitics of oil.
“People forget that Piper happened because there was a huge fabrication maintenance job on the go at the same time.
“They were trying to keep production going. They didn’t want to shut it down and tried to manage both operations at the same time – and you’re seeing the industry creep back to that.”