![]() ![]() An explosion and resulting oil and gas fires destroyed the platform, killing 167 people, including two crewmen of a rescue vessel. This produced a further massive explosion and fireball that engulfed the Piper Alpha platform. The heat ruptured the riser of a gas pipeline from another installation. On 6 July 1988, there was a massive leakage of gas condensate on Piper Alpha, which was ignited causing an explosion that led to large oil fires. ![]() ![]() In 1988, Piper Alpha was operated by Occidental Petroleum. It was connected by an oil pipeline to Flotta and by gas pipelines to two other installations. It produced oil from 24 wells and in its early life it had also produced gas from two wells. A large fixed platform, Piper Alpha, was situated on the Piper oilfield, approximately 120 miles (193 kilometers) northeast of Aberdeen in 474 feet (144 meters) of water. Piper Alpha was a large North Sea oil platform that started production in 1976. To this day, the disaster is the worst ever in the industry by the numbers of lives-lost 167 people died. Thirty-two years ago, on July 6, 1988, one of the offshore oil and gas industry’s worst-ever disasters struck – the explosion of the Piper Alpha platform in the UK North Sea. On this Day in 1988: Offshore Industry’s Deadliest Disaster ![]()
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