"Lloyd's and one of its leading underwriters, Ian Posgate (later acquitted). In 1986, the year Lloyd's moved into a new building at 1 Lime Street (where it remains today), the British government commissioned Sir Patrick Neill to report on the standard of investor protection available at Lloyd's. His report was produced in 1987 and made a large number of recommendations, but was never implemented in full. It has long been normal for one Lloyd's syndicate to reinsure another, but when Piper Alpha, a North Sea oil rig, exploded on 6 July 1988 causing an initial $1.4bn loss, the practice had"
"oilfield. In April 1988, the company acquired Cain Chemical for $2 billion. On July 6, 1988, an explosion and subsequent inferno on the company's Piper Alpha platform in the Scottish North Sea, resulted in 167 fatalities in what remains the world's most deadly offshore disaster. In September 1988, the company formed a joint venture with Church & Dwight, which makes Arm & Hammer products, for a potassium carbonate plant at Muscle Shoals, Alabama. In 1990, Armand Hammer died and Dr. Ray R. Irani became chairman and chief executive officer of the company. In 1991, the company sold its stake in"
"to the Cullen Inquiry the events of that night were retold twenty years to the minute after they happened. National Geographic featured this incident in an episode of its ""Seconds From Disaster"" documentary. The 2013 documentary film ""Fire in the Night"" is about the disaster. In 2018, the disaster was featured on ""James Nesbitt's Disasters That Changed Britain"". Testimonials were heard from survivors and relatives of victims. Piper Alpha Piper Alpha was an oil production platform in the North Sea approximately north-east of Aberdeen, Scotland, that was operated by Occidental Petroleum (Caledonia) Limited. It began production in 1976, initially as"
"Minerals Management Service reported 69 offshore deaths, 1,349 injuries, and 858 fires and explosions on offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico from 2001 to 2010. On July 6, 1988, 167 people died when Occidental Petroleum's Piper Alpha offshore production platform, on the Piper field in the UK sector of the North Sea, exploded after a gas leak. The resulting investigation conducted by Lord Cullen and publicized in the first Cullen Report was highly critical of a number of areas, including, but not limited to, management within the company, the design of the structure, and the Permit to Work System."
"involved selling the field in segments and offering it to multiple bidders. However, critics cited the Gore family's involvement with the company as evidence of graft. In 1999, OxyChem achieved Star Status under OSHA's Voluntary Protection Programs as being among the safest work sites in the U.S. On July 6, 1988, the company's Piper Alpha offshore production platform in the North Sea was destroyed when an out of service gas condensate pump was started with its pressure safety valve removed. The subsequent gas leak, explosion and fire resulted in the deaths of 167 workers in what remains the world's deadliest"
"of the region, and the proximity of important markets in western Europe has made the North Sea an important oil producing region. The largest single humanitarian catastrophe in the North Sea oil industry was the destruction of the offshore oil platform Piper Alpha in 1988 in which 167 people lost their lives. Besides the Ekofisk oil field, the Statfjord oil field is also notable as it was the cause of the first pipeline to span the Norwegian trench. The largest natural gas field in the North Sea, Troll gas field, lies in the Norwegian trench dropping over requiring the construction"
"significant Cold War confrontation began in the Baltic. Its economic importance grew in the 1960s as surrounding countries began to exploit oil and gas resources. The largest environmental catastrophe in the North Sea was the destruction of the offshore oil platform Piper Alpha in 1988 in which 167 people lost their lives. Although de facto control of the North Sea played a decisive role in the political power relationships in north-west Europe since the time of the Vikings, and became a question of world politics after the First Anglo-Dutch War, until after the Second World War the bordering countries officially"
"a heavy blow by the loss of 167 men during an explosion and fire aboard an offshore rig, the Piper Alpha. It remains the world's worst offshore disaster and there is a memorial to the crew in Hazlehead Park. Petroleum industry in Aberdeen The petroleum industry in Aberdeen began with the discovery of significant oil deposits in the North Sea during the mid-20th century. Aberdeen became the centre of Europe's petroleum industry. With the largest heliport in the world and an important service ship harbour port serving offshore oil rigs, Aberdeen is often called the ""Oil Capital of Europe"". The"
"both production and safety overseen by the same agency was a conflict of interest. The disaster led to insurance claims of around $1.4 billion USD, 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. Survivors and relatives of those who died went on to form the ""Piper Alpha"" Families and Survivors Association, which campaigns on North Sea safety issues. The wreck buoy marking the remains of the"
"some offshore employers regarded Piper Alpha survivors as Jonahs – bringers of bad luck, who would not be welcome on other rigs and platforms. The family members of the dead and surviving victims also reported various psychological and social problems. Alexander also wrote that ""some of these lads are stronger than before Piper. They've learned things about themselves, changed their values, some relationships became stronger. People realised they have strengths they didn't know they had. There was a lot of heroism took place."" In 2013, on the 25th anniversary of the disaster, the video ""Remembering Piper - The Night That"
"Act, which was signed into law in 1980 by U.S. President Jimmy Carter. On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker struck Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, spilling an estimated 260,000 to 750,000 barrels of crude oil. The Exxon Valdez oil spill was a major environmental disaster for the state. Governor Steve Cowper, who held office at the time of the spill, appointed Walter Parker as the chairman of the Alaska Oil Spill Commission in 1989. The Alaska Oil Spill Commission was created by the Alaska state government to investigate the causes of the Exxon Valdez oil spill."
"inquiries, a pattern emerges; organizational accidents are not a result of randomly coinciding ""operator error"", chance environmental or technical failures alone. Rather, the disasters are a result of a breakdown in the organization's policies and procedures that were established to deal with safety, and the breakdown flows from inadequate attention being paid to safety issues. In the UK, investigations into incidents such as the sinking of the MS Herald of Free Enterprise passenger ferry (Sheen, 1987), the Kings Cross underground station fire (1987) and the Piper Alpha oil platform explosion (1988) raised awareness of the effect of organisational, managerial and"
"accidentally crashes it. Exxon Valdez oil spill The ""Exxon Valdez"" oil spill occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska, March 24, 1989, when ""Exxon Valdez"", an oil tanker owned by Exxon Shipping Company, bound for Long Beach, California, struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef, 1.5 miles west of Tatitlek, Alaska at 12:04 am local time and spilled (or a mass of 35,000 metric tonnes) of crude oil over the next few days. It is considered to be one of the most devastating human-caused environmental disasters. The ""Valdez"" spill is the second largest in US waters, after the 2010 ""Deepwater Horizon"" oil"
"killed 115 people in Alaska, and damage was estimated at over $300 million ($1.8 billion in 2007 U.S. dollars). It was the second largest earthquake in the recorded history of the world. Anchorage's recovery from the earthquake dominated life in the late 1960s. In 1968, oil was discovered in Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Slope; a 1969 oil lease sale brought billions of dollars to the state deacent. In 1974, construction began on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. The pipeline was completed in 1977 at a cost of more than $8 billion. The oil discovery and pipeline construction fueled a modern-day"
"Exxon Valdez oil spill The ""Exxon Valdez"" oil spill occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska, March 24, 1989, when ""Exxon Valdez"", an oil tanker owned by Exxon Shipping Company, bound for Long Beach, California, struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef, 1.5 miles west of Tatitlek, Alaska at 12:04 am local time and spilled (or a mass of 35,000 metric tonnes) of crude oil over the next few days. It is considered to be one of the most devastating human-caused environmental disasters. The ""Valdez"" spill is the second largest in US waters, after the 2010 ""Deepwater Horizon"" oil spill, in terms"
"between 1991 and 1999), but overall there has been a downward trend of deaths and injuries. In 1959, the Knox Mine Disaster occurred in Port Griffith, Pennsylvania. The swelling Susquehanna River collapsed into a mine under it and resulted in 12 deaths. In Plymouth, Pennsylvania, the Avondale Mine Disaster of 1869 resulted in the deaths of 108 miners and two rescue workers after a fire in the only shaft eliminated the oxygen in the mine. Federal laws for mining safety resulted from this disaster. Pennsylvania suffered another disaster in 2002 at Quecreek, 9 miners were trapped underground and subsequently rescued"
"Marcopper mining disaster The Marcopper Mining Disaster occurred on March 24, 1996, on the Philippine island of Marinduque, a province of the Philippines located in the Mimaropa region. It remains one of the largest mining disasters in Philippine history. A fracture in the drainage tunnel of a large pit containing leftover mine tailings led to a discharge of toxic mine waste into the Makulapnit-Boac river system and caused flash floods in areas along the river. One village, Barangay Hinapulan, was buried in six feet of muddy floodwater, causing the displacement of 400 families. Twenty other villages had to be evacuated."
"Hurricane Ike's assault on the region early on September 13, 2008. On October 30, 1987, a crane at the Marathon Oil refinery accidentally dropped its load on a tank of liquid hydrogen fluoride, causing a release of of hydrogen fluoride gas and requiring 3,000 residents to be evacuated. On March 23, 2005, the city suffered another explosion in a local BP (formerly Amoco) oil refinery which killed 15 and injured over 100. The BP facility in Texas City is the United States' third-largest oil refinery, employing over 2,000 people, processing 460,000 barrels (73,000 m³) of crude oil each day, and"
"field and then onto the main line to Flotta. Separate diameter gas pipelines run from Tartan platform to the Piper, and from Piper to the gas compressing platform MCP-01 some to the northwest. A large fixed platform, ""Piper Alpha"" was situated on the Piper oilfield, approximately 120 miles (193 km) northeast of Aberdeen in 474 feet (144 m) of water, and comprised four modules separated by firewalls. The platform was constructed by McDermott Engineering at Ardersier and Union Industrielle d'Entreprise at Cherbourg, with the sections united at Ardersier before tow out during 1975, with production commencing in late 1976. For"
"the 1988 Piper Alpha disaster and Lord Cullen report in 1990, Shell International created a team to look at Safety management systems and Safety Cases. That team worked until 2004 they developed a number of approaches, the EP forum (later the Oil and Gas Producers Association) guidance on Safety cases was founded on work by that team. The team worked closely with Leiden and Manchester Universities to, utilising the understanding of accident causation that had been developed in the 1984-2000 research programme. In 1992 Mircosoft released windows version 3.1. That gave the team the ability for the first time to"
"of the disaster, the platform accounted for approximately ten percent of North Sea oil and gas production, and the accident is the worst offshore oil disaster in terms of lives lost and industry impact. In Aberdeen, the Kirk of St Nicholas in Union Street has dedicated a chapel in memory of those who died containing a Book of Remembrance listing all who died. There is a memorial sculpture in the Rose Garden of Hazlehead Park. Four companies that later transformed into the OPCAL joint venture obtained an oil exploration licence in 1972, discovered the Piper oilfield located at in early"
"June 5, 1892, when Oil Creek flooded and a tank of petroleum ether overturned. The petroleum ether ignited and in the ensuing explosions 60 men, women and children died. Another lightning strike in 1894 resulted in lost in a fire. Oil production in Pennsylvania peaked in 1891, when other industries arose in Titusville. The iron and steel industries dominated the town in the early twentieth century with lumber eventually reclaiming its former cachet. Oil is still relevant, however. Charter Plastics Company, now located in a building that once manufactured pressure vessels, stationary engines and boilers for the oil industry, uses"
"Sea King. Episode 6: Ditching, Ditching, Ditching (First broadcast 11 February 1990) The team assist in the rescue of persons on board a helicopter that crashed into the North Sea. Episode 7: Piper Alpha (First broadcast 18 February 1990) The role that 202 Sqn played in the response to the Piper Alpha tragedy. Throughout the emergency the survivors evacuated by the 202 Sqn teams were lifted via the MSV ""Tharos"". Episode 8: Chox's Lecture (First broadcast 25 February 1990) Winchman, Paul ""Chox"" Barton provides advise for any walkers, climbers and tourists that may not be fully prepared. Episode 9: Water"
"1980s and 1990s, the organization's oiled wildlife response efforts extended well beyond California. International Bird Rescue staff spent six months managing three bird centers and two search-and-collection programs in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, where 11 million gallons of crude oil spilled into Alaska's Prince William Sound, killing between 100,000 and 250,000 seabirds. Exxon Valdez was the first major spill where field stabilization and transport were utilized extensively in oiled wildlife care. Following the Exxon Valdez incident, Congress passed and President George H.W. Bush signed into law the U.S. Oil Pollution Act (OPA) of 1990. Among other requirements, the law"
"were Greek). The Second Dawson Disasters was a mining accident on February 8, 1923 in Dawson, New Mexico in which 123 men died. The Speculator Mine Disaster occurred in the copper mines of Butte, Montana on June 8, 1917. An electric cable being lowered into the mine was accidentally ignited at 2,500 meters below the surface. The fire quickly climbed the cable, in turn igniting the shaft. The shaft thus became a chimney, eliminating the mine's primary source of oxygen. Nearly all of the 168 fatalities were due to asphyxia. It remains the deadliest underground hard rock mining event in"
"and its 1989 account producing a 650 per cent loss on capacity; Feltrim 540 followed with a 550 per cent loss ratio. Roy Bromley of syndicate 475 later committed suicide, having been dismissed by his Board and reportedly becoming distressed at his operation's mounting losses. The early to mid-1990s saw the continuation of Lloyd's most traumatic period in its history that had begun with the explosion on Piper Alpha. Unexpectedly large legal awards in US courts for punitive damages led to substantial claims on asbestos, pollution and health hazard (APH) policies, some dating as far back as the 1940s. Many"
"Fire and Blast Information Group The Fire and Blast Information Group (FABIG) is a not-for-profit, membership based organization created in the UK in 1992 in the wake of the Piper Alpha disaster to continue the sharing and dissemination of expert knowledge on fires and explosions arising from the major research projects carried out in the early 1990s. FABIG has become an internationally recognized body for the development and dissemination of guidance for hydrocarbon fires and explosions for offshore platforms and onshore petrochemical plants. The mission of FABIG is to disseminate knowledge and best practice and to develop guidance on the"
"NEPCO 140 oil spill The NEPCO 140 Oil Spill took place in 1976 near Clayton, New York when the NEPCO 140 ran aground while traveling inland, spilling an estimated of oil into the Saint Lawrence River. On June 23, 1976, the tugboat ""Eileen C"" was pushing the NEPCO 140 barge, filled with crude oil, when it ran aground in the American Narrows, off Wellesley Island, in the Thousand Islands region. The Captain had not made a large enough adjustment to his course, when realizing the vessel was off-track in the thick fog.<ref name=""Suspension_Revocation/Commandant_Decisions""></ref> Upon running aground, the barge ruptured two"
"1983, when the derrick of the ""Eniwetok"", a Panamanian-registered oil rig, passed under the aerial ropeway and struck the cable that stretched over the waterway between the Jardine Steps Station and the Sentosa Station. As a result, two cabins plunged 55 metres into the sea, killing seven people. The oil rig was being towed away from Keppel Wharf when it became entangled in the cable and caused it to snap. It also left 13 people trapped in four other cabins between Mount Faber and Sentosa. The accident was the first involving death or injury since the cable car system opened"
"Disaster Action Disaster Action was founded as a charity in 1991 by survivors and bereaved people from UK and overseas disasters. In the late 1980s, there were a number of serious incidents in which many lives were lost, such as the sinking of the MV Jupiter (1961), Hillsborough, the Herald of Free Enterprise, Lockerbie, the Marchioness, Piper Alpha and UTA Flight 772. Maurice de Rohan from the Herald Families Association realised that the issues the Herald families were experiencing would almost certainly be encountered by others in similar disasters and therefore gathered together a group of people in circumstances that"
"dust. The disaster at the Union Pacific Coal Company Hanna mine #1 occurred on June 30, 1903. Coal mine gas (methane) was ignited in Mine No. 1 causing a violent explosion and a mine cave-in, killing 169 miners, while 46 survivors narrowly escaped this disaster. Many bodies, recovered over the next year, are buried in the nearby Hanna Cemetery. This tragedy was the greatest loss of life in any Wyoming mining disaster. The mine's bosses blamed the accident on a careless miner and, because of a coal strike in Colorado, Union Pacific Coal Company reopened mine #1 a few months"
"Murphy Oil USA refinery spill The Murphy Oil USA refinery spill was an oil spill that resulted from the failure of a storage tank at the Murphy Oil USA petroleum refinery in the residential areas of Chalmette and Meraux, Louisiana, United States, on August 30, 2005, in the wake of the levee breaks and catastrophic flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina. On August 30, the storm surge from the hurricane caused massive failure in the levees along the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal, inundating St. Bernard Parish with of water. The Murphy Oil refinery was flooded with of water, and a above-ground"
"cleared and insufficiently tested prior to the incident. OMI Charger The OMI Charger was a single-hulled oil tanker built in 1969 and used by the OMI Corporation. On October 9, 1993 while the tanker was anchored at Boliver Roads near Galveston, Texas, work began on sealing a previously discovered leak in a cargo tank. When a crew member lit an arc welder inside a tank, it ignited gasoline vapors, causing a tremendous explosion which killed three crew members and injured seven. The subsequent fire burned for five hours, and the ship was a total loss. A US Coast Guard investigation"