UK oil industry says Piper Alpha lessons learnt

By Alastair Sharp

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's oil and gas industry has spent billions and transformed standards to make a repeat of the worst ever offshore disaster highly unlikely, officials said on Thursday, nearly 20 years after the Piper Alpha explosion.

The North Sea platform blew up in July 1998, killing 167 people, including two rescue workers, forcing the industry to revise radically its procedures.

A government inquiry led by Lord Cullen recommended the industry and its regulators should implement more than 100 changes.

"Piper Alpha changed the way this industry deals with its major accident hazard risk," said Chris Allen, health and safety director for the employer federation Oil & Gas UK.

"Just as the Titanic didn't have enough lifeboats for all the passengers on board and it's now inconceivable you would get on a passenger ferry that didn't have any lifeboats or life jackets."

Allen said tougher legislation and a system of independent verification implemented by the government's Health and Safety Executive (HSE) as well as billions of pounds of corporate investment in safety training have made the oil industry safer.

"The equipment has improved, the training has particularly improved," he said, speaking via a video link from Aberdeen.

"Nowadays you don't get to be an OIM (offshore installation manager) unless you've been taken down to the simulator and put through your paces. That just didn't happen 20 years ago."