Marine seismic contractors take steps to improve safety environment

Andrew McBarnet reviews the involvement of the marine seismic industry in the UK offshore oil company initiative A Step Change in Safety, launched nearly six year ago and still being actively pursued. Good news has always received a bad press, or indifferent at best. That’s why accident free operations go unnoticed and health and safety only ever takes a high profile when something goes wrong. Hence it must have been with mixed feelings that the International Association of Geophysical Contractors (IAGC) found itself draw into the Step Change in Safety initiative launched by the UK Offshore Operators Association in 1997. As Jim Sommerville, chairman, EAME Chapter, IAGC, puts it ‘The marine seismic industry was quite advanced in cross-fertilisation with regard to safety issues. We had already worked together on the development of safety manuals in a way which saw full collaboration between competitors.’ It is also a fact that over the past 10 years, apart from a blip in 1998, the overall record in terms of marine seismic safety worldwide shows a low rate of incidents and an underlying trend of continuing improvement. That said, Sommerville acknowledges that the Step Change in Safety initiative did bring some renewed focus to the IAGC’s view of safety issues. Step Change in Safety has a bit of history behind it dating back to Piper Alpha oil production platform disaster in the UK sector of the North Sea on 6 July 1988 in which 167 people died. The accident was the result of a massive leakage of gas condensate on the Occidental operated installation which ultimately caused a series of explosions and fireball engulfing Piper Alpha in just 22 minutes.