Platform’s evacuation shows need for vigilance, warns safety chief

A top health and safety boss has warned the evacuation of a North Sea platform last month highlights the need for the oil and gas industry to be “constantly vigilant”.

EnQuest’s Thistle Alpha installation, about 125 miles north-east of Shetland, evacuated its 115 crew after a subsea inspection flagged deterioration in the condition of a metal plate connecting a storage tank to the platform’s legs.

Addressing the Oil and Gas UK HSE Conference in Aberdeen yesterday, Health and Safety Executive chairman Martin Temple said: “Asset integrity includes the primary structure of the installation, the integrity of which all else on the installation depends on.

“The recent downmanning of the Thistle Alpha platform following subsea inspection findings which have implications for the integrity of the primary structure, reminds us to be constantly vigilant for changes.”

His speech at the P&J Live event came after industry leaders signed up to a set of safety leadership principles on Tuesday, promoting the involvement of senior managers in preventing “major hazards”.

Highlighting the 1988 Piper Alpha catastrophe, in which 167 workers lost their lives, Mr Temple said: “Should such a dreadful event ever happen again on the same scale, the audience would be larger, the questioning more critical and sustained, and the answers demanded more punishing.

“Social and political support for the industry could plummet and its social licence to operate severely threatened.

“Regulators and the regulated should continually remind themselves of this social warrant and continue to work hard, together, with renewed imagination, invention and vigour to further reduce and, where possible, eliminate the historic risks and meet the challenges of future risks in our constantly evolving world of work.”