Piper Alpha Oil Rig

The Piper Alpha Oil Rig, which occurred off the coast of Aberdeen, is the deadliest oil rig accident in history. Piper Alpha Oil was the world's largest oil producer at the time, producing 317,000 barrels of oil per day.

On July 6, 1988, technicians removed and examined safety valves that were critical in preventing a dangerous build-up of liquid gas as part of routine maintenance. A total of 100 identical safety valves were examined. Unfortunately, one of them was not replaced since the technician made a mistake. At 10 p.m. on the same day, a technician began pressing the button that started the horrible accident by moving the liquid and most expensive gas pumps in the world. The 300-foot platform was enveloped in flames in less than two hours. It eventually caved in, killing 167 people and causing $3.4 billion in losses.

There is debate over whether there was enough time to conduct a more effective emergency evacuation. The key issue was that when the initial explosion damaged the control room, most of the individuals with the authority to order an evacuation were killed. This was due to the lack of blast walls in the platform design. Another cause was that the neighboring connected platforms Tartan and Claymore continued to feed gas and oil to Piper Alpha until the second explosion, when its pipeline collapsed in the heat. Even when they could see Piper Alpha burning, their operations teams did not think they had the power to turn off production.

Total loss: $3.4 billion