Today marks the 23rd year since the Piper Alpha disaster in the North Sea. On 6 July 1988 the rig exploded, killing 168 of the workers who on board, with only 61 survivors.
The Piper Alpha rig was operated by Occidental Petroleum (Caledonia) and was located 120 miles off the northeast coast of Scotland.
The explosion at the Piper Alpha rig, then the largest in the North Sea, was caused by a gas leak.
Earlier today familes remembered the event at the Kirk of St Nicholas’s St John’s chapel in Aberdeen and at the memorial statue in Rose Garden of the city’s Hazlehead Park.
The accident led to the Cullen Inquiry. The Inquiry’s recommendations led to improved health and safty legislation for the industry, including the transfer of the UK government’s responsibility for oil workers’ safety from the Department for Energy to the independent Health and Safety Executive.
The disaster also led to insurance claims of around $1.4 billion, making it at that time the largest insured man-made catastrophe. The insurance and reinsurance claims process revealed serious weaknesses in the way insurers at Lloyd’s of London and elsewhere kept track of their potential exposures, and led to their procedures being reformed.
