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SPECIAL FEATURE
By Lillian Espinoza-Gala
Piper Alpha and Macondo: Similar Disasters, Different Responses
The Deepwater Horizon disaster and the Piper Alpha tragedy are separated by 22 years and the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Both are the worst offshore disasters for their respective countries, and both forever changed those nations’ regulatory regimes and the reputations of the companies involved.
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lmost ten years after the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20, 2010, killed 11 men and injured 17 others, the offshore industry continues to grapple with the legacy of both disasters — even as it struggles to win back public trust.
www.ogvenergy.co.uk I April 2020
disaster, although each struck a sympathetic Both BP and Occidental Petroleum, the tone early on. BP’s Tony Hayward quickly set up operators of the Deepwater Horizon and a fund to pay businesses and others affected Piper Alpha, respectively, are far different by the 87-day spill that followed the disaster. companies today. BP, having gone through Then, he made an off-hand comment to a the crucible of the US legal system, is far TV reporter that he wanted his life back. That smaller. Much of the past decade was a single gaffe turned public sentiment against the financial fight for survival as it struggled to company and ultimately cost Hayward his job. pay legal settlements, battled a declining Armand Hammer, the iconic CEO of Oxy, made stock price, sold assets worldwide, and was a brief visit to Aberdeen and took responsibility, even rumoured to be a takeover target. Oxy, vowing to fund the cleanup and provide too, is much smaller and focused for injured employees and the primarily on drilling in the families of those who died. Then Permian Basin of West Texas. he went to tea with Margaret It’s currently fighting for Thatcher at 10 Downing survival amid declining oil The Piper Alpha Street. (Hammer was later prices, having paid $37 explosion on July 6, nominated for a Nobel billion to acquire rival 1988 — which killed 167, Peace Prize, losing to the Anadarko Petroleum Dalai Lama.) including two rescue last year, a deal many analysts now question. workers — remains It’s unlikely that a CEO the offshore industry’s would have tea with the BP was a British deadliest man-made prime minister in the wake of company operating the disaster. such a disaster today. Indeed, Deepwater Horizon in even BP’s far harsher treatment American waters, and Oxy by the US government (rather was an American company than brewing up a pot of Earl Grey, operating Piper Alpha in British President Barack Obama wanted to know waters. Both explosions erupted on calm “whose ass to kick”) might pale compared with moonlight nights just before 10 p.m. Both the backlash in the current geopolitical climate. company’s CEOs struggled to respond to the
