Jump to content

Blogs

Cygnus Instruments Ltd
 

Cygnus DIVE used on HMS/M A7 Submarine

The A7 Project is part of The SHIPS Project (Shipwrecks and History in Plymouth Sound), which is being run by a local group of divers and shipwreck enthusiasts.

The main aim of the project is to record the long maritime history of Plymouth and the nearby area and in doing so also raise awareness of their historic and varied maritime heritage. By documenting, recording, mapping and publishing this information it will help to ensure these archaeological sites are preserved and appropriately maintained. This is important for a whole host of reasons including, remembrance, conservation, historic value and for future generations.

The A7 Project is one of the varied array of projects that are currently on-going. It is an investigation of the Royal Navy submarine HMS/M A7 which was lost in 1914 in Whitsand Bay, Cornwall sadly with all hands lost. The submarine A7 is designated as a Controlled Site under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986, this prohibits all diving operations without licence from the U.K. Ministry Of Defence. The A7 project team are the first to be granted a license.

As part of their study, the team of divers used the Cygnus DIVE underwater thickness gauge to measure the metal thickness of HMS/M A7. This helped to establish not only its current condition but over time can be used to monitor the rate of corrosion. Due to the pitting of the steel, the team used the gauge in single echo mode with a twin crystal probe. As the gauge has data logging capability, readings were logged to be analysed later at the surface.

Peter Holt, SHIPS Project manager and director, 3H Consulting Ltd., said "We used the 5MHz dual crystal as it gave the best results on the pitted steel we found on the many corroded ships hulls where we tried the UT gauge. The DIVE was reliable, very easy to use, has simple menu system and displays. The logging function was essential as we only had 13 minutes on the wreck each day; I could make lots of measurements and figure out the answer back home in post processing, we also didn't have to write anything down or think too much as thinking isn't so easy in 40m water with the effects of narcosis!”

There are many other supporters of the A7 Project, including the Universities of Birmingham and Plymouth, 3H Consulting and the Nautical Archaeology Society and we are very pleased that a Cygnus gauge can play a small part in what is a very worthwhile project.

There is lots more information to be found about The SHIPS Project and the A7 Project on the website www.promare.co.uk/ships/ .
Cygnus Instruments Ltd

Cygnus Instruments Ltd

0
Life after the Marines
 

Working in New Orleans

So life after the military is interesting its a chance in the life that I was living in the military, however, I wouldn't change anything for the current profession that I am in now. the only problem that I see is what to do for housing in New Orleans area, anybody with years of experience diving in this area can shed some light I would be greatly appreciated. Please comment below.
Nolan

Nolan

0
Life after the Marines
 

First Entry

So as the title of the blog states I'm a former US Marine now that I'm out of the Corps I am seeking work as a commercial diver / welder. Which if that was the standard line I wouldn't have a problem. I have all the credentials needed just I have some legal issues in my background that are preventing me from going forward. I am a strong hard worker, I am a dedicated employee just need a break. I have all the training from a qualified dive school, including my TWIC card, I have 2 valid passports (Canadian / USA). Just need a break.

Anybody else in the similar situation where you have some prior legal issues and now are hampered from getting a career in your new job path?
Nolan

Nolan

1
karmilabunac's Blog
 

3 things all first time homebuyers should know

Home buying is a tricky process, though it can yield wonderful results. Getting from the searching to the buying phase isn’t easy, as unless you build a house yourself, you’re unlikely to find everything you ever wanted in an already constructed home. But many first time home buyers are under the impression that once the decision to buy has been made, the tough part is over. Not by a long shot. Suba Iyer, writer for Deseret News and a recent first time home buyer herself, realized there’s more to home searching than finding a pretty facade with a comfortable floor plan, and there’s a lot more to home buying than swiping a credit card and signing on the bottom line.

[b][i]Look into the future[/i][/b]
First, home buyers should think long term. Purchasing a home is not like signing a rental lease, knowing if it doesn’t work out you can just move at the end of the lease. Home buying is fairly permanent, with the common advice being to only buy if you plan on being in the area at least five years. A few points for home buyers to consider:

*When will you have kids (or more of them)?
*Do you anticipate needing to resell in the future?
*Will you need to take care of elderly or ailing relatives?
*What are schools in the area like?
*Are there busy streets or other dangers for children nearby?

Some of these questions might affect your decision of where to buy a house, and some of them might affect its future resell value. Sure, you don’t plan on having kids right away, but a lot of people do have kids, and will it be difficult to resell the home if it’s in an area not conducive to child rearing?

[b][i]Have a “make it or break it” list[/i][/b]
You will find in your home searching process that there are some things you absolutely cannot live without, some things you really want but don’t need, and some things that would be nice but not necessary to have. Iyer suggested making a checklist of those things you must have or must avoid, printing it off, and taking a copy with you to each house you visit. Some ideas might be number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, storage space in the kitchen, backyard size, location of the master bedroom, size of garage, and placement of the washer and dryer.

[b][i]Research all possible options for funding[/i][/b]
Did you know that cash on hand or loans are not the only way for paying for a house? During her home buying process, Iyer found that there are many more funding sources, including grants and discounts. She said, “I always thought the income limit for qualifying for these types of funding would be very low, but I was pleasantly surprised by the generous income limit on many of the options.” For instance, she found there are grants available for teachers, farmers, and law enforcement officials. There are also grants based on “the area of the potential house, whether it’s in a rural area, high poverty area, etc.” So don’t limit yourself to one option for your mortgage payment.

Interior Decorating and Remodeling News Brought to You by BaseBoardRadiatorCover.com
Source: deseretnews.com/article/865605781/10-tips-most-first-time-homebuyers-don7t-consider.html
karmilabunac

karmilabunac

0
McQueen's Blog
 

Where to get started in commercial diving?

Hello!

I just finished school in England last year, meaning that I am 19. Iv been working for my dads friend dive shop in Phuket Thailand for the last 7 months as a Dive master. The job is good and the life style is great but I know its not what I want to do foreseeable future, as the moneys not the best and I don't feel like I'm gaining that much from it now. Iv talked to a few guys about commercial diving and from what they've told me it sounds like the kind of career path that I'm looking for. I'm headed over to Perth, WA in May. The reason I'm writing this blog is to see if anyone could point me in the right direction for once i get there? If anyone could recommend the best way to get started? It doesn't necessarily have to be In Perth.

Thankyou for taking your time to read this

Jordan
McQueen

McQueen

1
Michael Smart's Blog
 

Privileged Offenses—crimes against the industrial labor force

[indent][indent][indent][indent][indent][i]The public see these fines as the value the courts put on human life.
Widows and families are shattered by the size of them. What do sums
of a few hundred pounds mean to these companies? They spend more
in the bar afterwards than they pay in fines.[/i][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent]
[indent][indent][indent][indent][indent][indent][indent][indent]—— Roger Lyons
Burgoyne Committee, [i]Glasgow Herald[/i], June 24, 1981[/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent]

In Scotland, it is a matter of public policy for prosecutors to use their office to stamp out crime.[sup]2[/sup] They see the arrest and conviction of lawbreakers as part of their duty to safeguard the public interest, and punishment “a valuable component of the criminal justice process, largely because of its capacity to deter future crime.”[sup]3[/sup] But not all violations of the criminal code are viewed equally. Murder, rape, robbery, for example, occupy a higher echelon than say public drunkenness or driving without a license. And when it comes to crimes against the industrial labor force, Professor Carson says Britain has had a long history of placing corporate crime into a special category where it was “rarely thought of as ‘real’ crime.”[sup]4[/sup]

Moreover, as this view penetrated the modern day offshore arena, tolerance towards infringement of the regulations became so pervasive and “institutionalized at a fairly high level,”[sup]5[/sup] that when oil companies were actually caught violating the law, those violations were “only rarely subjected to criminal prosecution.”[sup]6[/sup]

Indeed, the Diving Inspectorate had the power to prosecute wrongdoers, but preferred instead to rely upon exhortation to convince contractors to mend their ways.[sup]7[/sup] Added to this dynamic were other troubling factors. Carson discovered that the legal branch of the Department of Energy and the Scottish legal system did not always see eye to eye “over whose responsibility it was to lay the groundwork for possible prosecution.”[sup]8[/sup] And London was not always anxious to cooperate with the investigations of Scottish prosecutors,[sup]9[/sup] refusing in one case to comply with a fiscal’s request for a copy of a lease which would have established the identity of a concession owner,[sup]10[/sup] and managing to persuade Scottish authorities not to prosecute an offender, in another.[sup]11[/sup]

This tension between the two legal powers spilled over into another fundamental law enforcement area. DOE officials believed it was the job of the police to investigate criminal activity and the coroner’s inquest to decide whether there were grounds for prosecution. But north of the border, Carson interviewed a fiscal who said it was not the job of the police officer to go offshore “looking for offences.” That was the job of the DOE inspector.[sup]12[/sup]

Still, even if inspectors were inspired to look for lawbreakers, Parliament had removed any chance of catching them in the act. Unlike their Norwegian counterparts, who had the power to make sudden inspections without notice, UK inspectors were required to give the oil operator advance notice when they intended to fly out to have a look.[sup]13[/sup]

The Department’s reluctance to prosecute is not surprising when one takes into account that bringing an oil company to court was inherently at odds with its role as sponsor. When Energy Secretary Tony Benn held up a bottle of crude oil in front of press reporters in 1975 and declared, “I hold the future of Britain in my hand,”[sup]14[/sup] he wasn’t just rallying the country with an inspirational slogan; he was pledging official support. To men like Commander Warner who worked under Secretary Benn, that declaration must have resonated deep within their spines because they had to know that shutting down operations and hauling rule breakers off to court was not going to help get the country out of its economic mess. As Commander Warner best describes the situation, “there were no ‘Brownie points’ for convictions.”[sup]15[/sup]

Lastly, one must never discount the power of the Association of Offshore Diving Contractors. Had Chief Inspector Warner taken a harsh stand against offenders, the AODC would not have taken the matter lying down. Complaints from the Association would have rained down upon the oil companies, who in turn would have brought pressure to bear upon Warner’s superiors. When this scenario was put to one of the leading diving contractors of that era, he was unable to suppress a smile: “We would have worked it that way, so none of us are totally innocent.”

While the DOE was reluctant to prosecute, Carson discovered that the agency was not alone in that feeling.[sup]16[/sup] Against the usual rhetoric about “safeguarding the public interest,” and prosecution being “a deterrent,” it turns out that Scottish authorities also ranked offshore crime far down on its list of illegalities. Among government records, from 1977 to 1980, Carson found 29 reported fatalities, 168 serious accidents, and 368 dangerous occurrences involving all aspects of offshore work, diving and non-diving alike.[sup]17[/sup] And yet, Carson was able to find only 13 cases where prosecutors had initiated criminal proceedings.[sup]18[/sup] These 13 cases (involving 23 companies or individuals) concluded with ten convictions, four not guilty, four deserted, and five dismissed as incompetent.[sup]19[/sup]

Moreover, even when the accused were found guilty, the level of fines was so deplorably low that it made the conviction virtually meaningless. In the 1977 K. D. Marine case, for example, when divers Howard Spensley and Charles Meehan drowned, the company and the diving supervisor were fined £200 and £25 respectively after pleading guilty to one of the charges. In 1978, after Philip Baxter of Dundee fell 80 feet to his death through a badly fixed grating, Shell Oil was convicted of negligence and paid a fine of £200.[sup]20[/sup] These fines were near the level of what might be imposed for a serious motoring offense in Scotland, such as driving while drunk or without insurance.

Besides illustrating the degree to which negligent acts were being punished, the magnitude of these fines reflects the prosecutor’s view of the seriousness of the crime and his judgment of the accused. In Scotland, he plays no part in recommending to the sheriff what sentence should be imposed upon a convicted offender. But he does affect the sentencing when he chooses what prosecutorial procedure to employ. With the exception of the Infabco trial, all the defendants in Carson’s study were prosecuted by the less time-consuming, less expensive procedure of Summary Complaint rather than by the more serious process of Indictment. This decision was not insignificant because Parliament had restricted the maximum penalty upon conviction by Summary Complaint to £400, whereas a company convicted on Indictment could have received a larger fine at the discretion of the sheriff. Thus, when the fiscal chooses summary procedure, he not only limits the sentencing options of the judge, he is also “in effect helping to define what constitutes serious crime,” as legal experts Moody and Tombs point out.[sup]21[/sup] And it’s clear from the record that during the 1970s, authorities did not view the types of infringement going on offshore as serious crime.

As for the accused, the likelihood of serving jail time was more a legal fiction than a reality. In 1979, when Richard and Skip died, the Crown was not indicting company directors for their managerial actions. According to Health and Safety expert Gareth Watkins, more than a decade would have to pass before Britons would hear of a managing director in the UK being found guilty of manslaughter.[sup]22[/sup] And it would not be until 1997 that a person working in the North Sea oil industry,[sup]a[/sup] would receive a prison term for committing a crime offshore.[sup]23[/sup] Furthermore, had Infabco been convicted in 1980, it is unlikely that the court would have imposed an exemplary fine on Masterson’s company. More likely Infabco would have received a small fine as was the case when Sub Sea Offshore[sup]b[/sup] lost two divers in 1984.

On February 21, David Bowmar and Thomas Mackey died while performing a welding test in a hyperbaric chamber at Sub Sea’s base of operations on Greenwell Road in Aberdeen. The supervisor neglected to analyze one of the gas mixtures to the diving system, and in the course of the simulated dive, Bowmar and Mackey were fed, not air as was intended, but pure nitrogen. Sub Sea and the company that supplied the gas were subsequently prosecuted under Indictment, and after pleading guilty to the charges, paid £2,500 and £1,000 respectively for the dual fatality.[sup]24[/sup]

To officials at the Crown Office in Edinburgh, it was not the seriousness of the accident that determined the scale of the fine, it was the “degree of negligence.” In their view, oil companies pay a premium for all the bad publicity and lawsuits generated by the loss of life.[sup]25[/sup] That attitude coincided with the Department of Energy’s. The year Richard and Skip died, it made this comment to the Burgoyne Committee regarding the current level of penalties:

[indent]Prosecutions are rare but where they have been undertaken, particularly in Scotland, it has been the adverse publicity which has hurt rather than the available penalties. It must be remembered that the fines which can be imposed can never themselves have much financial impact on a multi-million pound international oil company.[sup]26[/sup][/indent]
Indeed they cannot if the actions of the legislature and prosecutors prevent the courts from imposing adequate penalties. As for using adverse publicity to backstop abuse and neglect: given the fact that the oil industry operates as a closed society far out at sea, it seems unreasonable to rely upon press coverage to act as a substitute penalty system.

What was needed to stop the flow of preventable deaths was an independent oversight agency, with the will to beat the tom-toms and enforce the law. Had the Diving Inspectorate not been encumbered by conflicting interests, then it would have stopped the outbreak of scuba deaths in 1976, and it would have instituted reforms after [i]Canopus[/i] and before Richard and Skip went on their fatal dive. But those actions did not occur because the DOE was unable to keep the priority of safety separate from the political goal of pushing forward the national oil policy.



a) A diving supervisor in the Bradley Westell case.
b) Formerly Sub Sea International.

Excerpt from the book, [i]Into the Lion's Mouth[/i].
---------------------------------
[b]Endnotes:[/b]
1 The title of this chapter is taken from [i]Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison[/i], Michel Foucault, p. 78.
2 Susan R. Moody and Jacqueline Tombs, [i]Prosecution in the public interest[/i], p. 89.
3 Susan R. Moody and Jacqueline Tombs, [i]Prosecution in the public interest[/i], p. 59.
4 W. G. Carson, [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 231-232.
5 W. G. Carson, [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 232.
6 W. G. Carson, [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 7.
7 W. G. Carson, [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 250.
8 W. G. Carson, [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 266.
9 W. G. Carson, [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 266-267.
10 W. G. Carson, [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 266.
11 W. G. Carson, [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 250.
12 W. G. Carson, [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 266.
13 The Burgoyne Report, [i]Offshore Safety[/i], p. 61.
14 [i]The Chronicle[/i] p. 1093.
15 Jackie Warner and Fred Park, [i]Requiem for a Diver[/i], p. 33.
16 W. G. Carson, [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 248-249.
17 [i]Brown Book[/i], 1982, p. 60.
18 W. G. Carson, [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 267.
19 W. G. Carson, [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 267-268.
20 [i]Glasgow Herald[/i], June 24, 1981.
21 Susan R. Moody and Jacqueline Tombs, [i]Prosecution in the public interest[/i], p. 32, 82.
22 Gareth Watkins, [i]The Health and Safety Handbook[/i], p. 3.
23 Case No. T960640. Regina v. Kenneth Roberts, July 2, 1997.
24 [i]Press and Journal[/i], May 10, 1985.
25 [i]Glasgow Herald[/i], June 24, 1981.
26 The Burgoyne Report, [i]Offshore Safety[/i], p. 229.
Michael Smart

Michael Smart

1
Michael Smart's Blog
 

How Job Pressure Can Lead to Disastrous Results

[center][i]There’s only two can’ts—if you can’t do it, you can’t stay.[/i][/center]
[indent][indent][indent][indent][indent][center]—— Charles Woolfson et al.
[i]Paying for the Piper[/i], p. 47.[/center][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent]

By late May 1976, five divers had already died while working on oil and gas projects. One case in particular bears special attention because it demonstrated how the role of safety could be subjugated by the interests of a powerful oil company and that diving from a heaving ship was infinitely more perilous than diving from a stable barge.

For a second time the incident involved drop weights, with the fatality resulting from another accidental bell surfacing of the kind that killed the two Ocean Systems’ divers in 1974, and by a chilling coincidence it occurred on exactly the same day, January 17.

Under a contract to provide diving services to Hamilton Brothers in the Argyll Field, Comex Diving Limited installed a portable saturation system on the stern of a small supply vessel known as the [i]Smit Lloyd 112[/i]. The stern was a convenient location from which to launch the bell, but it was also an area most susceptible to heave. By late August 1975, the ship had arrived in the field to commence work,[sup]1[/sup] and as the winter months approached, rough seas repeatedly caused diving operations to be aborted due to the difficulty of getting the bell through the splash zone as well as it bouncing on the end of its lift wire like a yo-yo.[sup]2[/sup] To get the bell through the air/sea interface more rapidly, Comex officials authorized the dive crew to add additional weight, but this, too, proved ineffective.[sup]3[/sup]

Unhappy that their work schedule was being adversely affected, Hamilton Brothers began to apply pressure upon Comex to remedy the situation.[sup]4[/sup] A meeting was called to discuss the situation, and according to the Comex Diving Safety Manager, the oil company “demanded” that the diving system be adapted to allow operations to continue in more marginal sea conditions.[sup]5[/sup] The client’s basic concern, the project manager would later testify, “was to get a system with increased efficiency as quickly as possible.”[sup]6[/sup] To Comex, the message was clear: either fix the problem or get off the job.

With the threat of losing a lucrative contract looming, Comex decided to take a completely unorthodox approach to solve the problem of the yo-yo effect. Instead of suspending the bell over the job site, the company decided to allow the crew to modify the bell to set it directly onto the seabed, a procedure never used in the North Sea before. To counteract the effect of a heaving ship on a slack bell wire, Hamilton Brothers instructed another company to build and install a heave compensator to act as a shock absorber for the system.[sup]7[/sup]

Like most diving bells of that era, the one on board the [i]Smit Lloyd[/i] was fitted with a drop weight which was flat and doughnut‑shaped and rested like a steel collar around the perimeter of the trunking just inside a protective bumper guard. When work began on the modifications, the doughnut weight was removed and replaced with a heavier 2.2 metric ton weight tray which was slung beneath the bell by two wire strops. These strops were attached by lengths of chain to a pair of drop weight release pins mounted on the hull of the bell.[sup]8[/sup] The new weight tray now functioned as the drop weight, and when the system was in operation, it would rest upon the sea floor while providing ballast for the buoyant bell floating about six feet above. Unfortunately, when Comex constructed the lead‑lined tray, it neglected to provide holes in the bottom to negate whatever suction force the seabed might impose upon it as well as the more vulnerable release pins.[sup]9[/sup]

[center][img]https://scontent-b-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/p206x206/529412_326446790826767_1626256242_n.png[/img][/center]
By October, the tray was installed, but the heave compensator had not yet been fabricated. Nevertheless, Comex was prepared to dive the bell without it, and did so. On a routine dive that month, the ship was pitching up and down like a hobby horse as the crew began lowering the bell with Derek Bannister and a man named Brorurd inside.[sup]10[/sup] At about 30 feet or 30 meters from the surface, Bannister couldn’t be sure, he felt a “sudden jolt.”[sup]11[/sup] The next thing he remembered, the bell was on the surface and he was looking through one of the lower portholes at a pair of broken chains. The weight tray had come free. No one was injured apart from “the odd bruise,” Bannister said, because the bell had remained sealed with the inside door closed.

Shaken by the accident, Bannister went on leave while Comex built an identical weight tray (the original was abandoned on the seabed) and equipped it with stronger, more fortified sling components. By the time Bannister returned to the ship in mid‑January, the heave compensator had been installed and tested, at which time Hamilton Brothers discovered that a pipeline connection near one of its subsea satellite wellheads was leaking oil. They instructed Comex to repair it. A young Texan by the name of Clay Ellis and John Mallin were originally slated to make the dive, but by the afternoon of the 17th, Bannister volunteered to take Mallin’s place.[sup]12[/sup]

One of the guiding principles of safe diving is to keep the bell above seabed obstructions at all times, particularly subsea wellheads which are box‑kite‑shaped structures that tower 20 to 30 feet off the mudline. For this reason, the decision by Comex to conduct a dive that put the bell into direct contact with the seabed and in close proximity to a wellhead was a dangerously ill-conceived plan. It may have served the interests of Hamilton Brothers, but it deliberately and unjustifiably put Bannister and Ellis at greater risk. If the [i]Smit Lloyd[/i] suddenly dragged her anchors or was mistakenly moved in the wrong direction by an order from the diver, the bell could impact and snag on the wellhead with potentially disastrous results.

At 1722 the launching of the bell went according to plan and Bannister and Ellis came to rest in 256 feet of water approximately 10 to 15 feet from the wellhead.[sup]13[/sup] Argyll oil at that time had only been flowing for about six months so the surrounding seafloor was still covered in drill mud, a thick, gooey substance used during drilling operations. Twenty‑year‑old Ellis exited the bell, traveled down the pipeline at the full length of his umbilical but could not reach the leaky connection. He could see it, but he couldn’t reach it.[sup]14[/sup]

He had to move the bell.

Communications through his mask was poor so Ellis returned to the bell and stood on the bottom door with his head inside the trunking. He took his mask off and instructed topside in which direction the ship should move. Topside then disengaged the heave compensator and began hoisting the bell. It took some force to break the weight tray out of the mud—one engineer would later calculate as much as “20 times the maximum force that the release mechanism could withstand.”[sup]15[/sup]

This action, along with the shock applied to the bell wire from the heaving ship, sheared one of the bronze release pins and completely bent the other connecting the weight tray to the bell.[sup]16[/sup] There was a loud bang and Bannister called out for topside to stop what they were doing. Seconds later there was another bang. With no ballast securing the bell to the bottom, it started to shoot to the surface, main lift wire and umbilical trailing behind.

As the bell soared to the surface, expanding gas bubbled noisily out of the trunking. Ellis lost his footing and would have fallen out had Bannister not managed to grab him and pull him inside. With the atmosphere fogging from the rapid decompression, Bannister was still struggling furiously to close the inside door when the two men arrived on the surface forty‑five seconds later. Eventually he got the door closed and started to re-pressurize the capsule, but in the desperation of the moment something had fallen across the face of the hatch preventing a seal.[sup]a[/sup] Moments later the two men blacked out from the lack of oxygen in the now‑depressurized atmosphere. When Bannister regained consciousness hours later, he was paralyzed from the chest down and Ellis was dead.[sup]17[/sup]

Clay Don Ellis was “mad about diving” his mother would say to reporters,[sup]18[/sup] and he was the 27th diver to die in the North Sea since the government began collecting statistics on fatalities. Immediately after the accident, Comex reinstalled the doughnut weight.[sup]19[/sup]

Strangely, the Department of Energy, the agency responsible for investigating diving accidents, did not make an official inquiry into Ellis’s death, having been persuaded by Comex that current safety regulations did not cover diving operations on subsea pipelines.[sup]20[/sup] To close this apparent gap in the legislation, new regulations were quickly drafted and by July 1976, the Submarine Pipe-lines (Diving Operations) Regulations were put into effect. For the next five years, they would set the minimum standard of safety for diving in the North Sea.



a) Bannister suggested in court that it might have been a glove.

Excerpt from the book, [i]Into the Lion’s Mouth[/i].
---------------------------------------
[b]Endnotes:[/b]
1 Ellis FAI (Fatal Accident Inquiry Transcript), p. 198.
2 Ellis FAI, p. 198.
3 Ellis FAI, p. 261.
4 Ellis FAI, p. 228.
5 Ellis FAI, p. 47, 204.
6 Ellis FAI, p. 264.
7 Ellis FAI, p. 355. There was no mention in court records about compensating the bell umbilical as well.
8 Ellis FAI, p. 233.
9 Ellis FAI, p. 80-81.
10 Ellis FAI, p. 302.
11 Ellis FAI, p. 302-303.
12 Ellis FAI, p. 412.
13 Ellis FAI, p. 321.
14 Ellis FAI, p. 306.
15 Ellis FAI, p. 112.
16 Ellis FAI, p. 113, 121, 124, 165, 169, 181.
17 Carson, W. G., [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 69.
18 [i]Press and Journal[/i], January 19, 1976.
19 Ellis FAI, p. 242, 379.
20 Ellis FAI, p. 297.
Michael Smart

Michael Smart

1
Michael Smart's Blog
 

An Incestuous Relationship

[indent][indent][indent]The Minister should understand that some of us feel deeply that an improper
relationship is involved. Indeed, it is an incestuous relationship. The sponsoring Department
has no business getting involved with health and safety.[/indent][/indent][/indent]
[indent][indent][indent][indent][indent][indent][indent][indent][indent]—— W. G. Carson
[i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 174.[/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent]

A few months after Bryan Gould aired [i]The Last Dive[/i], a well-documented book about the UK offshore oil industry was published entitled [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i]. It was written by W. G. “Kit” Carson. Carson was not a man particularly attracted to the high drama of North Sea diving accidents. He wasn’t a diver, a rig worker, or a journalist looking for his next day’s headline. In fact, he’d never worked offshore at all, and yet he knew more about the North Sea oil industry in ways that even Richard and Skip would have found astonishing. Dr. Carson was a professor of criminology at the University of Edinburgh, and like Bryan Gould, became inextricably drawn to the [i]Wildrake[/i] accident, but for entirely different reasons.

With a long‑standing interest in British factory legislation, Carson wanted to investigate the offshore oil industry, its safety practices, and how the government regulatory system was working. With the sudden discovery of “unanticipated wealth” off the coast, Carson suspected that Britain’s quest for oil “might turn out to be a rough and tough affair in which questions of safety were pushed aside in the pursuit of riches previously undreamed of.”[sup]1[/sup]

In 1976, he received a small government grant to determine whether such an investigation was even feasible. When his initial research indicated that it was, he was given a final grant to complete his work. In 1982, he published his landmark study which effectively linked Britain’s policy of rapid exploitation to the North Sea’s poor safety record and ultimately to the kinds of tragic consequences that fell upon men like Richard and Skip.

Carson discovered that the origin of this link could be traced back to the mid-1960s when the country’s reliance on imported oil was putting pressure on the national Treasury, and at a time when seismic testing in the North Sea was suggesting that the Continental Shelf might contain significant quantities of oil and gas. Desperate to head off mounting economic woes, it didn’t take government officials long to commit the nation to an ambitious program where rapid exploitation became the dominant theme towards curbing the balance­‑of‑payments problem.[sup]2[/sup] In the years that followed, speed underscored all developing events. It was a fundamental ingredient in the drive towards self-sufficiency and it explained why successive administrations allowed offshore operations to proceed without first ensuring that adequate safety provisions were in place.[sup]3[/sup]

By the end of 1973, Britain’s economy was in dire straights. War had broken out in the Middle East with OPEC nearly quadrupling the price of crude. The country’s oil importation bill, which was once calculated in the hundreds of millions of pounds in the mid-1960s, was now on a collision course with the unheard of sum of nearly £4 billion by the end of 1976.[sup]4[/sup]

On the streets, an angry citizenry was feeling the weight of the energy crisis and uncontrollable inflation. Food prices had risen dramatically, power restrictions were in force, and industry was on a three‑day‑work week. On the eve of a general election, the country was in a state of emergency and Prime Minister Edward Heath was under tremendous pressure to take the nation’s energy policy out of the hands of the colossal Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and elevate it to cabinet level. Not to do so was considered to be “a serious disadvantage,”[sup]5[/sup] and the Prime Minister agreed.

On January 8, 1974, Heath created the Department of Energy and installed heavyweight Lord Carrington as energy czar. The mandate of the new agency was to assist the oil industry with such things as licensing and the development of energy policy. But its responsibilities also extended to the creation and enforcement of regulations that the oil companies had to comply with. In effect, the DOE wore two hats, and to some North Sea observers this spelled trouble for the offshore worker because it set up a competition between the government’s exploitation policy and the role of safety. There was a real fear that Department officials, caught between conflicting priorities, might lack the necessary independence to impose the law upon, or even criticize, the very industry it was sponsoring. And, in a larger context, the question could be asked: would an administration really punish an industry for misconduct when it lays at its feet the very resources which enhances its ability to stay in power? These fears gain further momentum by something else Carson discovered: not only had authorities incorporated the administration of safety into a framework where the rush for oil had become a top economic priority,[sup]6[/sup] but they also “vertically structured” the chain of command so as to leave those responsible for safety “answerable to superiors whose brief included other, and not necessarily compatible, objectives.”[sup]7[/sup]

Unlike safety inspectors who worked onshore within the Health and Safety Executive, DOE inspectors were rarely rotated to new locations to prevent fraternization. Inevitably, in their struggle to discover what industry was learning, regulators developed a “close relationship” with the regulated.[sup]8[/sup] The two bodies began exchanging personnel which helped to strengthen bonds and ensure a “common outlook” in terms of achieving economic goals.[sup]9[/sup] To oil executives, there was nothing improper about enticing government regulators to come work for them, but to critics this practice smelled like a system of “deferred bribery.”[sup]10[/sup]

While authorities in Norway would remove the responsibility for health and safety from the industry’s sponsoring department, British officials, in contrast, not only resisted this approach, but took extraordinary measures to ensure that the supervision of safety remained in the hands of an organization with a less than autonomous view of the industry it was regulating.

Ultimately, Carson says the oil industry’s self-definition became “institutionalized” within the bureaucratic structure of the DOE.[sup]11[/sup] Even Energy Secretary Tony Benn conceded that the relationship between regulators and regulated tended to get “a bit cosy.”[sup]12[/sup]

That cozy relationship later became an issue before the Burgoyne Committee when it began looking into the DOE’s handling of offshore safety. In its final report, two dissenting committee members, Miller and Lyons, warned that the potential for conflict of interest was real and could not be overlooked. In their view, the whole approach to the administration and enforcement of offshore safety was “unacceptable” and adamantly stood on the principle that:

[indent]a Government Department substantially responsible for the direction and control of an industry should not in any way be responsible for the standards and enforcement of occupational health and safety in that industry.[sup]13[/sup][/indent]
Not surprisingly, the Department of Energy bristles at any implication that safety was compromised by the pressures of oil production. One junior Minister responsible for offshore safety is quoted by Carson as saying that everyone...

[indent]in the Department of Energy, from the Secretary of State downwards, is dedicated to safety as a number one priority. We realize the value of the resources we have in the North Sea; we are anxious to have those reserves brought to the surface as quickly as possible; but we are not going to sacrifice one life in order to achieve this, if we can possibly help it.[sup]14[/sup][/indent]
But Carson says “such bland assurances” were contradicted by a bias within a state structure that, on occasion, firmly weighted the “relative priorities” of production against the enforcement of safety by the DOE.[sup]15[/sup] Whether that bias gained a foothold in the small branch that regulated diving is not something Carson specifically addressed in his study. But his research does at least raise the specter that the same kinds of pressures affecting the parent agency as a whole may have created a situation where the diving industry’s reputation for danger became a convenient excuse to obscure a death toll that was unnecessarily high for other reasons. Moreover, when one looks into the past and examines the case histories of other fatalities, it becomes clear that the Diving Inspectorate’s special relationship with industry fostered conditions where the Wildrake tragedy became the inevitable consequence of years of regulatory neglect and industry abuse. At least one Wildrake diver is convinced that it was and contends that, by 1979, the industry was poised for such an accident, and that when it finally occurred, it exposed all the tragic political and human consequences of a failed enforcement regime.

At the root cause of this failure lay the conflict that put safety inspectors in the untenable position of having to weigh the political and economic consequences of interrupting the flow of oil against the concern for safety. While DOE officials were keen to invest themselves with bumper‑sticker slogans like “Safety First,” they showed no such enthusiasm towards solving the internal problems of inadequate staffing, poor salaries, and lack of experience of diving inspectors. Nor was there an aggressive campaign to carry out one of the diving division’s prime directives, that of preventing similar accidents from repeating themselves.

As written, the law in some critically significant areas was manifestly vague. That vagueness allowed contractors to circumvent the intent of the legislation for economic gain. And while they employed resource after resource to obfuscate the law or head off new legislation to close the gap on unsafe practices, divers continued to die. In one remarkably sad and unaccounted for period, inspectors deliberately ignored the obvious lethal consequences of one particular diving practice that accounted for one third of all fatalities within the first ten year period of the Diving Inspectorate’s tenure.

While it had the power to shut down unsafe operations, the Inspectorate never exercised those powers, even after serious accidents. Instead, it avoided that responsibility and allowed a profit‑motivated industry to police itself and, on occasion, to flagrantly ignore the law. Even in those rare instances when the Inspectorate found criminal proceedings to be unavoidable, its watchdogs not only displayed a lack of knowledge in preparing evidence for prosecutions,[sup]16[/sup] they sometimes appeared in court defending the very practice that contributed to the fatality.

In short, instead of discovering evidence to support the premise that strict law enforcement was the standard of the day, what one finds is the final piece of the puzzle which led to the [i]Wildrake[/i] tragedy—an inept government agency that cultivated a questionable enforcement record, was all too willing to wear its sponsorship hat more often than its safety hat, and took little or no corrective action to curb the abuses that laid the foundation for what would happen to Richard and Skip.


Excerpt from the book, [i]Into the Lion's Mouth.[/i]
----------------------------
[b]Endnotes:[/b]
1 W. G. Carson, [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. ix.
2 W. G. Carson, [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 91.
3 W. G. Carson, [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 9.
4 [i]Brown Book[/i], 1977, p. 2.
5 Peter Hennessy, [i]Whitehall[/i], p. 446.
6 W. G. Carson, [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 166-167.
7 W. G. Carson, [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 165.
8 W. G. Carson, [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 173.
9 Charles Woolfson, John Foster, and Matthias Beck, [i]Paying for the Piper[/i], p. 265.
10 Charles Woolfson, John Foster, and Matthias Beck, [i]Paying for the Piper[/i], p. 266.
11 W. G. Carson, [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 203.
12 W. G. Carson, [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 175.
13 The Burgoyne Report, [i]Offshore Safety[/i], p. 58.
14 W. G. Carson, [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 209.
15 W. G. Carson, [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 209.
16 W. G. Carson, [i]The Other Price of Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 247-248.
Michael Smart

Michael Smart

0
Michael Smart's Blog
 

The Rush for Britain’s Oil

[indent][indent][indent][indent]There will be argument for many years as to whether or not Britain
should have developed her North Sea resources as quickly as she did.[/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent]
[indent][indent][indent][indent][indent][indent][indent][indent]—— Guy Arnold, Britain’s Oil, p. 133.[/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent]

In Britain, the onset of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the latest oil price increase from $3.01 to $5.11 per barrel couldn’t have come at a worse time for Prime Minister Edward Heath. All year long the leader of the Conservative Party had been struggling with an economy reeling from the effects of runaway inflation and a growing balance‑of‑payments deficit. January had brought thousands of British civil servants, including clerks and secretaries from his Cabinet Office, into the streets in angry protest over his earlier decision to impose a 90‑day wage and price freeze. The work stoppages were the first ever mounted by civil servants, and the action disrupted the very fabric of ordinary British life: travel through airports, disbursement of government subsistence checks, tax collection, registration of births and deaths, even the reading room at the British Museum was closed to the public.[sup]1[/sup]

A month later, gas‑industry workers, upset about the government’s cap on wage increases, disrupted deliveries. Schools, factories, and homes went without heat. Investors, demonstrating their lack of confidence in Heath’s anti-inflation policies, began taking their money out of the London Stock Exchange to the tune of $5 billion.[sup]2[/sup] Meanwhile, as wages remained frozen, food prices continued to soar because half Britain’s food supply came from abroad.[sup]3[/sup]

Added to Heath’s economic woes was the country’s growing dependency on foreign oil. Britain was consuming about 98 million metric tons of oil products each year, 80 percent of which was supplied by the Middle East and Libya.[sup]a[/sup] And now, after a 70 percent rise in the barrel price, reports were circulating that the oil import bill, currently at $2.5 billion, was likely to grow by another billion dollars annually.[sup]4[/sup] Anticipating a shortfall in gasoline supplies, Heath ordered the stockpiling of rationing coupons at post offices throughout the country.[sup]5[/sup]

Arab oil ministers were obviously flexing their muscles, but the worst was yet to come. On October 17, the day after the price hike, OPEC began implementing a policy of monthly five percent cutbacks on the flow of oil to countries supporting Israel (primarily the US).[sup]6[/sup] The cuts would continue, it was declared, “until Israel evacuated the lands taken in 1967 and made restoration to the Palestinian refugees.”[sup]7[/sup] “Friendly countries” that adopted this view would continue to receive their normal supplies. When President Nixon asked Congress to authorize a $2.2 billion military aid package for Israel on the 19th, the Arab states promptly announced a full scale embargo.[sup]8[/sup]

Although the Gulf states designated Britain as one of the “friendly countries” and gave “assurances” that it would continue to receive its normal supplies,[sup]9[/sup] those assurances were under threat if the oil companies managing the distribution of Persian Gulf exports decided to ignore the will of OPEC. The Arabs warned that the embargo was not to be violated or there would be repercussions, and no one doubted the seriousness of that threat. Both Mobil Oil and Exxon had lost their positions in Iraq just one day into the October War.[sup]10[/sup]

Meanwhile, British coal miners were revving up for a fight with Prime Minister Heath over the size of their pay packets. Coal production was down and Heath feared that a full-blown strike in the midst of an oil shortage would be disastrous for the citizenry. Concerned that Britain might not get its normal shipments for the upcoming winter, he tried to strong‑arm the chairmen of British Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell Group into keeping the oil flowing into the country, no matter what the threats, but both men refused to cooperate.[sup]11[/sup]

On November 5, after deciding that their initial cutbacks were not severe enough, Arab oil ministers announced a further 25 percent reduction in oil shipments to Western Europe.[sup]12[/sup] Five days later, London predicted a shortfall of oil supplies by 15 to 25 percent for the upcoming winter. That revelation sent shock waves reverberating throughout the business community. To make matters worse, October’s trade deficit of $821 million was the worst in British history, nearly doubling the September figure.[sup]13[/sup]

With an energy crisis at hand and militant mine workers reducing coal stocks in order to destabilize the government, Heath had to take drastic measures to restore public confidence in his leadership. On November 13, he put the country into a state of emergency with industry expected to reduce power and fuel consumption by 10 percent. As theater owners turned off neon display signs in London’s West End, the Bank of England cut the money supply, sending the minimum lending rate rocketing from 11.25 percent to a record 13 percent, which in turn provoked a $3.6 billion sell-off on the London Stock Exchange.[sup]14[/sup]

A month later, with coal production down 40 percent, Heath extended the state of emergency and imposed new restrictions to cope with the energy crisis. Television broadcasting was banned after 10:30 p.m., phased blackouts were implemented, industry was put on a three-day-work week, and the public was asked to turn lights down and reduce heating to a single room.

In a televised address Heath tried to prepare the nation for hard times. “We shall have to postpone some of the hopes and aims we have set for ourselves for expansion and for our standard of living,” he said.[sup]15[/sup] All across the country, the winter of 1973-4 would soon be regarded as the worst ever since the end of the Second World War.[sup]16[/sup]

A suffering British economy, however, was of no concern to the OPEC Arab oil ministers. Their goal was to force the Israelis to give back the lands captured during the 1967 Six‑Day War and make reparations to the Palestinian refugees. To illustrate the seriousness of their demands, they met in Tehran that December and sparked a global energy crisis by raising the barrel price once again, this time more than doubling it to $11.65, effective January 1, 1974.[sup]17[/sup]

With OPEC now using oil as a political weapon, and the British economy continuing to slide into debt, there was a growing sense of urgency for government authorities to secure whatever indigenous sources of oil they had as rapidly as possible. In January 1974, this sense of urgency had become so acute, that Aberdeen editorials were offering advice to London in an effort to intensify the view that the country’s overall economic prospects were linked to North Sea oil. And it was “the new job of people in the North-east,” wrote British economist Roger Nicholson, “to convince the Government of this change.”

Nicholson suggested that companies supplying raw materials to the oil industry be given special exemptions from power restrictions, that the infrastructure necessary to accommodate the oil industry be fortified, and that planning procedures be “speeded up and strengthened...so that contractors can press on as quickly as possible with developments.”[sup]18[/sup]

The quicker the oil came out of the ground, the sooner Britain could inoculate itself from the vagaries of Middle East oil sheiks and thereby ease its balance-of-payments problems. And “hopefully,” wrote [i]The Scotsman[/i], “...lack of money will not be permitted to stand in the way of exploiting this priceless natural energy resource.”

And what was the mood toward environmentalists? There would be some “heartaches,” [i]The Scotsman[/i] declared, “where economic benefits far outweigh environmental losses.”[sup]19[/sup]

Aberdeen’s sense of urgency had not been overlooked by London. Since 1972, government officials were well aware that massive quantities of high grade, low‑sulfur oil lay beneath the British sector of the North Sea: the huge deposits in the Brent and Forties Fields were evidence of this. And while Norway would adopt a slower strategy for development, combined with state participation in order to curb the wrenching impact of foreign influence upon its people, culture, and local economies,[sup]20[/sup] Britain would take the opposite view.

Even at the outset, authorities placed a high priority on speed which was made clear by the Minister of Power in 1965 when he addressed the House of Commons detailing the guiding factors by which production licenses were to be allocated to the oil companies:

[indent]In the government’s view, the over-riding objective is to secure the most thorough and rapid exploration and development of the oil and gas resources of the Continental Shelf in the national interest. I shall therefore consider all applications which can contribute to this end...[sup]21[/sup][/indent]

Faced with this mandate, British industry suddenly found itself caught off guard and unable to cope with the daunting task of claiming its energy resources below a nasty sea. Due primarily to its “disappointing economic record” and “low level of investment in the manufacturing sector,”[sup]22[/sup] Britain neither possessed the technology nor the labor force skilled enough to fulfill the government’s objective at the desired pace. Just in terms of exploration alone, most of the equipment necessary to drill for oil was in the hands of the United States. Of the 29 rigs operating in the British sector of the North Sea in 1974, 79 percent were American owned or jointly owned by American/European ventures.[sup]23[/sup] Only one, the Sea Quest, belonged to the British.

In 1973, the Scottish Development Department projected that over the next decade 20 to 50 production platforms would be required to maintain a steady flow of oil to shore.[sup]24[/sup] The task of building and installing those platforms on the Continental Shelf would require large project management teams, an area which, again, US companies dominated because of their previous experience off the coast of California, and in the Gulf of Mexico.

Britain also found herself ill‑equipped in certain core industries such as the manufacture of large diameter pipe. For example, oil from the Forties Field would ultimately flow to shore through Japanese steel because there were no domestic mills capable of manufacturing pipe in the required thickness,[sup]25[/sup] or in diameters larger than 16 inches.[sup]26[/sup] Thus, the miles of 24‑ to 36‑inch pipe needed for Ekofisk, Piper, Ninian, and Frigg would come from abroad. Nor did the British have the barges to lay the pipe, so the Italians, Americans, and Dutch were typically hired to do the job.

But beyond the sheer logistics of building an offshore infrastructure, there were the enormous financial costs which the British banking system was unable to cope with. Initial estimates for exploration and development were in the neighborhood of £9.1 billion, not including operating costs.[sup]27[/sup] Very soon, this calculation would fall to cost overruns and delays due to weather conditions and inflation. British Petroleum, for example, would borrow £360 million in 1972 to begin the development of the Forties Field. But by 1976, that figure would balloon to £750 million.[sup]28[/sup] Brent would cost £2,900 million.[sup]29[/sup] These were staggering outlays that would have to be paid back with huge interest payments. And if the oil companies hoped to make a profit, and if North Sea oil was to provide a counterweight to OPEC as the government expected, then the nation’s oil resources would have to be brought to shore as quickly as possible and before any potential drop in market price.[sup]30[/sup]

Keen on a policy of “rapid exploration and development,” British authorities couldn’t have found a more willing partner than the American toolpusher whose speedy traditions had been a way of life for decades. Driven by profit, there was no philosophy more appreciated within the oil industry than the kind of behavior which got the job done yesterday. By the time Richard Walker landed on board the Choctaw in the fall of 1973, the industry was so imbued by this single most important priority that it set the tempo on the work deck and would ultimately play a role in determining his fate.

While the Minister’s statement in 1965 was expressed on behalf of national interest, it also represented the cornerstone of official sanction allowing the oil companies to carry on with their normal and accepted practices. And so they did. Contracts were signed, construction orders placed, and fabrication begun on platforms even before the construction yards were finished.[sup]31[/sup] Oil companies pressed for the earliest possible deliveries of the production platforms. And despite the fact that reliable data on wind, waves, and currents to determine their effect upon such structures did not exist, design and construction went ahead anyway.[sup]32[/sup]

Author Bella Bathurst writes that for centuries Britain needed the sea, “fed on it, took employment from it, and profited by it.”[sup]33[/sup] Now she was in a hurry to find her destiny as an oil producing nation. And if 1973 could be regarded as the calm before the storm, 1974 would be the year where the rush for oil unleashed construction projects on an unprecedented scale, the diving population would double,[sup]34[/sup] the government would create an entire Department to sponsor the oil industry, Prime Minister Heath would be forced from power, and classmates Tom Belcher, Burt Davis, and Craig Roberts would join Richard in Scotland.

Nineteen seventy-four would also produce the greatest number of diving fatalities in North Sea history.



a) 60% from the Middle East, 20% from Libya. Source: New York Times, October 18, 1973.

Excerpt from the book, [i]Into the Lion's Mouth[/i]
______________________________________
[b]Endnotes:[/b]
1 [i]New York Times[/i], January 11, 1973.
2 [i]New York Times[/i], February, 23, 1973.
3 [i]New York Times[/i], January 19, 1973.
4 [i]New York Times[/i], November 14, 1973.
5 [i]New York Times[/i], October 18, 1973.
6 [i]New York Times[/i], October 18, 1973.
7 [i]New York Times[/i], October 22, 1973.
8 [i]New York Times[/i], October 21, 1973.
9 Daniel Yergin, [i]The Prize[/i], p. 623.
10 [i]New York Times[/i], October 8, 1973.
11 Daniel Yergin, [i]The Prize[/i], p. 623-624.
12 [i]New York Times[/i], December 14, 1973.
13 [i]New York Times[/i], December 14, 1973.
14 [i]New York Times[/i], November 14, 1973.
15 [i]New York Times[/i], November 14, 1973.
16 [i]New York Times[/i], December 11, 1973.
17 [i]The Europa World Year Book[/i], 1996, p. 215.
18 [i]Press and Journal[/i], January 22, 1974.
19 [i]The Scotsman[/i], January 17, 1974.
20 Adrian Hamilton, [i]Oil: The Price of Power[/i], p. 147-149.
21 Department of Trade and Industry, North Sea Oil and Gas: [i]A Report to Parliament[/i], January 25, 1973, p.14.
22 D. I. MacKay and G.A. Mackay, [i]The Political Economy of the North Sea[/i], p. 84.
23 D. I. MacKay and G.A. Mackay, [i]The Political Economy of the North Sea[/i], p. 80.
24 Scottish Development Department, North Sea Oil Discussion Paper, April 1973.
25 D. I. MacKay and G.A. Mackay, [i]The Political Economy of the North Sea[/i], p. 83.
26 Guy Arnold, [i]Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 38, 48.
27 D. I. MacKay and G.A. Mackay, [i]The Political Economy of the North Sea[/i], p. 74.
28 Charles Woolfson, John Foster, and Matthias Beck, [i]Paying for the Piper[/i], p. 30.
29 Guy Arnold, [i]Britain’s Oil[/i], p. 35.
30 Charles Woolfson, John Foster, and Matthias Beck, [i]Paying for the Piper[/i], p. 20.
31 Department of Energy, North Sea Costs Escalation Study, Energy Paper No. 7, page 55.
32 Department of Energy, North Sea Costs Escalation Study, Energy Paper No. 7, page 10.
33 Bella Bathurst, [i]The Lighthouse Stevensons[/i], p. 8.
34 Jackie Warner and Fred Park, [i]Requiem for a Diver[/i], p. 45.
Michael Smart

Michael Smart

0
Michael Smart's Blog
 

How a Government Decision Added to the Death Toll

Early in 1976 Richard Walker was in Santa Barbara and Skip Guiel was in dive school in Wilmington, California. The [i]Wildrake[/i] accident was three years away and already contractors were taking advantage of an oversight agency that was staffed by the wrong people and unable to cope with problems created by imperfect laws. And while the UK Diving Inspectorate professed a desire to “learn from the lessons of the past and not repeat the errors,”[sup]1[/sup] it failed to ban a practice that accounted for more than one third of all fatalities within the first ten year period of its tenure because it was more interested in accommodating industry than raising standards of safety.

In some areas of the world, where sea conditions are less severe, the use of SCUBA in commercial operations is routine. But SCUBA is arguably the most dangerous form of diving there is, and the North Sea no place to be risking the lives of divers to test the soundness of that argument. The whole purpose for employing surface‑supplied diving techniques is to give the diver the added advantage of topside support. [i]Diving on SCUBA removes that advantage.[/i] The diver has a limited air supply, no communications, and typically no hot water. And without communications, the diver cannot talk to topside during an emergency, nor can the supervisor monitor the diver’s breathing or receive information on his activities underwater. Complications can occur if the diver exhausts his air supply, and because he is not tethered to the vessel, he can fall prey to tidal flows which have been known to wash men away before help arrives. And without the use of a full‑faced mask, if the diver becomes unconscious, he will drown if his regulator drops out of his mouth. In short, the number of things that can go wrong on SCUBA extends well beyond the argument that would justify its use. That SCUBA carried a host of increased risks was not unknown to the Diving Inspectorate. And yet, the watchdog agency stood strangely silent while a pattern of fatalities developed before its very eyes.

This pattern began on October 14, 1974, when Comex diver John Clarke was thrown against an anchor bolster of a drill rig, fracturing five of his ribs.[sup]2[/sup] Dressed in SCUBA gear, he had no lifeline, and no communications with his supervisor.[sup]3[/sup] His regulator subsequently dropped out of his mouth, and by the time he was recovered onto the deck of the rig, he was dead from drowning.

At the time of the accident, SCUBA was an unregulated activity in the North Sea. Commander Warner had only been appointed Chief Diving Inspector earlier that year and he was still adding finishing touches to a new set of regulations that were due out in a few months. Whether Clarke’s death caused any alarm in his office is not known. But if it had, and even if Warner wanted to ban SCUBA outright, by law he was not allowed to do so without first consulting with the people who would be affected by the regulation which were the diving contractors, or in practical terms, their lobbying arm, the Association of Offshore Diving Contractors (AODC).[sup]4[/sup] Indeed, as one former AODC Chairman recalls, regulations did not come into effect without heavy input from their organization:

[indent]Nearly all the legislation—the initial drafting—was done within the AODC, and then Jackie’s Department would modify slightly and put a stamp of approval on it, then it would be imposed on us.[/indent]

And in late 1974, the AODC did not want to see SCUBA eliminated from the North Sea. According to the former Chairman, the pretext for this position was that there were always going to be some jobs where the use of surface‑supplied diving gear presented a greater hazard to the diver than SCUBA:

[indent]...if Jackie had come along and said, ‘We want to ban SCUBA totally,’ we’d have been saying, ‘Yeah, we agree, it’s less safe than other methods, but there are certain specific jobs where the job cannot be done unless you use SCUBA; there is just no alternative. So if you ban SCUBA totally, then the oil company’s got a major problem, and the diving industry has got a problem because it’s our job to do the work underwater.’[/indent]

But what jobs are these? Surface diving in the North Sea involves a wide range of tasks and challenges, but nothing that would absolutely demand the use of SCUBA. Clarke could have easily accomplished his mission by using surface gear. The truth is, underlying SCUBA’s tenuous link to safety were other motivating factors that drove the AODC to push for its continued use. SCUBA offered powerful economic and logistical advantages that surface gear lacked. It reduced the equipment requirement for topside support; it was easier to transport, and setting up to dive took less time—no humping 600‑foot surface umbilicals around on deck. These incentives had nothing to do with safety, yet produced irresistible inducements to ambitious contractors, particularly when attempting to undercut competitors during contract negotiations. To critics, the AODC position was really just a “head fake” to allow its members to continue conducting diving operations on the cheap.

While the AODC saw “no alternative” to using SCUBA, there was in fact another option open to the Diving Inspectorate, namely, the dispensation. It could have banned SCUBA for safety reasons, then relaxed that ban on those rare occasions when the contractor justified its use and guaranteed additional safeguards to make up for the increased risk. This approach, however, was never adopted. In the end, the Inspectorate cut a deal with the AODC, and when the new regulations debuted at the beginning of 1975, the fruit of that deal was revealed.

On the plus side, free swimming was banned in the UK sector of the North Sea. The diver now had to be “securely connected to a lifeline” which was attached to either a person on the surface, or to another diver in the water who was connected to a person on the surface.[sup]5[/sup] In addition, he had to be provided with “an effective means of communication,”[sup]6[/sup] and could not go underwater unless he had a means of communicating “with the diving supervisor.”[sup]7[/sup]

At first glance, these provisions appear to have shut the door on the use of SCUBA. But on closer examination, under the sections headed by “Prohibited Diving Operations” and “Restrictions on Diving,” SCUBA was not listed. What’s more, the legislation left unclear other key issues. For example, it did not specify the nature of the diver’s lifeline, which might be interpreted as nothing more than a piece of rope; nor did the uncertain phrase “effective means of communication” necessarily translate to radio communications in the minds of some diving contractors. Again, the DOE left these definitions open to shrewd interpretation, and as a consequence, Clarke’s death would have a number of unfortunate sequels to it.

Of the 25 divers who died on the UK Continental Shelf between 1974 and 1983 (excluding territorial waters), seven, or 28 percent, were using SCUBA. And if one includes the names of the divers killed while working on oil and gas projects inside territorial waters (that the Diving Inspectorate either co-investigated or was aware of), that figure jumps to 36.6 percent. Statistically, SCUBA added far more names to the obituary column than any other type of accident in the history of North Sea diving.

[b]UK SCUBA Fatalities[/b]
Date Diver Company Cause of death
Oct. 14, 1974 John Clarke Comex drowned
July 16, 1975 Peter Walsh• Underwater Security Ltd. sudden acute decompression of the head
July 16, 1975 Peter Carson• Underwater Security Ltd. drowned
May 12, 1976 Nicholas Hubert• Not Known pulmonary barotrauma
May 13, 1976 Christopher Dymott• Not Known drowned
July 14, 1976 Richard Dupuy Comex cerebral anoxia
Nov. 4, 1976 Howard Spensley KD Marine drowned
Nov. 4, 1976 Charles Meehan KD Marine drowned
Dec. 24, 1976 Michael Moore Comex drowned
Aug 20, 1977 D. Sansalone Sub Sea Services drowned
June 2, 1983 R. M. Wallace Mobell (Marine) drowned

• the accident occurred in territorial waters, but was investigated by the DOE.

As the table shows, eight of these men drowned which would have been unlikely had they been using full-faced masks. Two accidents involved the practice of “daisy-chaining” divers, where the first diver was tethered to the dive station by a lifeline, while the second diver was merely connected to the first with a five-foot buddy line which he held in his hand.[sup]8[/sup]

This buddy‑line system was a Royal Navy diving technique,[sup]9[/sup] and was employed ostensibly to comply with the regulations. In some settings it might be suitable, but to use it for commercial operations in the unpredictable waters of the North Sea was asking for trouble. If the line connecting the two divers parted, it would leave the second diver at the mercy of the elements. What’s more, diving contractors apparently believed that the rope the second diver clutched in his hand satisfied the legal obligation “to provide an effective means of communication with every diver.” It certainly did not satisfy the more specific requirement that the diver be able to communicate with his supervisor.[sup]10[/sup]

Of the nine recorded fatalities in 1976, six occurred on SCUBA. Nine deaths within a twelve-month period was considered unacceptable, but to have two thirds of them associated with a method of diving known for its increased risk should have set off alarm bells all the way from Aberdeen to London. What’s more, none of these incidents involved a situation where the job would have been more hazardous using surface-supplied diving gear. If anything, jumping these men on SCUBA in marginal sea conditions was the more dangerous course of action. While using surface gear cannot eliminate all risk, it is unlikely that these men would have drowned had they been using full‑faced masks. And if Meehan and Moore had been equipped with communications, at the very least they would have been able to tell their supervisors what to do to assist them; certainly Moore would not have been lost in a drifting sea.

At this juncture, taking some form of action to stem the unprecedented tide of SCUBA deaths would have been a refreshing change in policy and consistent with the DOE’s line that prevention of accidents was a serious priority. But nothing seemed to compel the agency to stop a practice which clearly had no business being used in the North Sea, so the deaths continued.

Eight months after Michael Moore disappeared, an Italian diver by the name of Sansalone joined the growing gallery of SCUBA victims when he drowned while diving from a pipelay barge. Again, he was using air tanks and a free mouthpiece. More than a decade later, Commander Warner opined about the equipment the young Italian was using that day:

[indent]This, in my opinion, was quite the wrong equipment to be used by a man required to actually carry out work underwater.[sup]11[/sup][/indent]

One more SCUBA death was recorded during the summer of 1983 off the coast of England, and then 11 years later, long after the oil rush was over, the AODC finally issued this statement:

[indent]SCUBA (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus) has inherent limitations and it is strongly recommended that it should NOT be used for offshore diving operations in support of: oil/gas projects; marine construction; civil engineering or salvage.[sup]12[/sup][/indent]

Thus, in 1994, the practice of using SCUBA was voluntarily stopped, but by then the damage had been done.


Excerpt from the book, [i]Into the Lion's Mouth[/i].
-----------------
[b]Endnotes:[/b]
1 Jackie Warner, “Diving Bell Design: Safe deployment, operation and recovery,” Underwater Systems Design, April/May 1981, p. 11.
2 Clarke FAI, p. 46.
3 Clarke FAI, p. 31, 34, 35, 65, 66, 110, 130.
4 Mineral Workings (Offshore Installations) Act 1971, Section 7 (1).
5 The Offshore Installations (Diving Operations) Regulations 1974, Regulation 6 (1) (b) (i), (iii).
6 The Offshore Installations (Diving Operations) Regulations 1974, Regulation 16 2 (d).
7 The Offshore Installations (Diving Operations) Regulations 1974, Regulation 19 (a).
8 Meehan/Spensley FAI, p. 7, 15, 24.
9 Moore FAI, p. 70-71.
10 The Offshore Installations (Diving Operations) Regulations 1974, Regulation 19 (a).
11 Jackie Warner, and Fred Park, Requiem for a Diver, p. 51.
12 AODC document 065.
Michael Smart

Michael Smart

0
jaku uys' Blog
 

3.2u Inspection diver and DMT in search of work

Good day

I am a freelance 3.2U inspection diver and DMT with almost 3years experience. mostly work with Drillships, Semi Subs and SBM's but Im always open for new challenges.
Im currently in search of new work and will work anywhere and I am ready to mob ASAP.
If any company is in search or has work coming up or wants my CV or any body knows of work coming up drop me a mail here or mail me on:

jakuuys@gmail.com

thank you
jaku uys

jaku uys

0
GregDavies' Blog
 

ANY ADVICE ON HOW TO BECOME A COMMERCIAL DIVER?

I am just coming out of HM Forces after 24 years and i'm looking for a new exciting career that is active. I don't know any commercial divers and have no experience in commercial diving although i have dived before. I have got the option to train at the Fort william school. I am very determined and robust but don't want to spend a lot of money and then not be able to find work?

I have read other posts saying "don't listen to the dive schools" so hopefully I can get some great advice from this blog no matter how truthful it might be. I was thinking of possibly doing NDT courses also?

Any help will be very appreciated.

Cheers,

Greg.
GregDavies

GregDavies

6
Divers Gifts & Collectables
 

New 2 Volume Book-Set For Sale: 'DIVING HELMETS AND EQUIPMENT THROUGH THE AGES'

[img]http://www.diversgifts.com/shopimages/products/normal/IMGP0004.jpg[/img]

[font="Arial"][size="3"][size="4"][size="5"][b]'Diving Helmets and Equipment through the Ages'[/b][/size]
[/size]
By Anthony Pardoe

A two volume Book Set presented in a protective slip case, containing photos and information on many of the world’s most well known makers diving equipment including: Siebe Gorman, Morse, DESCO, Heinke, Galiazzi, SALVAS, Draeger, Piel, Petit, IAC, Schrader, Flohr, Clouth and many, many more.

This high quality coffee table style publication is in 2 volumes:

[u][b]Volume 1[/b][/u] - Explores Tony’s World of Diving Helmets is copiously illustrated with well over 650 colour photographs plus drawings and black and white illustrations in some 240 pages. Each helmet has a description with technical details where known, though as some of the items are over 100 years old this information has been lost as the producers have ceased trading many years ago. Featuring around 150 helmets the book will provide the reader with many hours of pleasure as well as being an invaluable source of reference for the newly interested and avid collector alike.

[u][b]Volume 2[/b][/u] - Illustrates Tony’s equipment collection in over 220 pages and has chapters on Pumps, Diver’s Control Panels , Telephones, Lamps, Knives, Tee Spanners , Cuff expanders, Diver’s weights, Boots, Suits and Ancillary Equipment. There is even a chapter on Pictures, Plaques, Diver’s smoking pipes and other Diving Collectable pieces. There are items included which have rarely ever been seen and the book illustrates equipment the reader may never have even known existed. Again with literally hundreds of colour photos the Equipment Volume is the most comprehensive ‟catalogue‟ of old diving equipment available today.

Each Volume is 285 mm X 285 mm and have a combined weight of 4.5 Kilos.
The paper is a high quality satin finish and bound so the pages fall naturally.
There is even a useful magnifier/ruler/bookmark included.

More images available here: http://s1285.photobucket.com/albums/a591/Paul_Guiver/Diving%20Helmets%20And%20Equipment%20Through%20The%20Ages/?albumview=slideshow

The price is fixed at £299. [u]You will not find this book anywhere else for less[/u] so save your time, order your copy now and as a bonus; [b]claim 10% off your next order[/b]* from our website: http://www.diversgifts.com/product.php?xProd=232&xSec=6

*Purchasers applying for the 10% discount must email their gifts order direct to info@diversgifts.com with full details (Name and date book set was purchased), discount does not apply to the book-set.[/font][/size]
[size="3"][font="Arial"]
Customers outside the UK: For purchasing please contact us direct for a shipping quote by emailing your order direct to info@diversgifts.com[/font][/size]
diversgifts

diversgifts

0
Life As An Offshore Personnel Coordinator
 

George Lock

I am deeply sadden with news.. even sadder that I didnt hear it from any of my ex-colleagues.

Blue-eyed George, has turned my eyes blue tonight. You were never forgotten my dear friend, I was waiting for your comeback but the Lord loves you even more than us.

Back in Hallin, we have 3 OCM whom I worked very closely with. Each individual has their own character, strength and weakeness (annoyance to be exact). However, George is the all-time favourite OCM among the girls. Sorry C&C, that's the spoken truth!

I didn't expect my first encounter with George was my last and his too. It was my first hands-on mobilisation with the American boys, Wild Well Control. Having it planned from scratch to end together with Jason Holvey... Bet you didnt even know this Mark. A 4days, 24-hrs mobilisation was well planned and executed. Even though George and I have liaise, gossips, jokes ard thru chains of emails, it was my first time having to meet him in person onboard Windermere. And he treats me like no stranger onboard; like we've known each other for ages. His good looks also explains pretty well, why the girls are gigi-gaga over him...

With me he often talks abt his family, and i giggled hard when I learned his email address was a join name of his and his wife Christine. Uber sweet!

George is charismatic, charming and most importantly, displayed an impeccable leadership skills. On the last day of the mob, I was still onboard cross checking all the purchase items had been delivered. Thanks to Divex, I had to spend a night onboard as they deliver the most critical item at midnite! (I was alittle panicky as she's due to sail at break of dawn!)

When I see with my own eyes, from AB upwards shows alot of respect to him onboard, I knew I was in safe hands. I remember he called on everyone to help out with the caters. I remember the exact words "Everyone onboard is going to eat so everyone down to help with food stock!" Everyone came down and did the human chain passing boxes until 2am! It was first of everything for me, being onboard a DP vessel, working with people across globes whom I never met before and being the only girl! It was a valueable experience of which I am so thankful to the whole team, my Project Director, Manager and OCM for giving this experience. When my baby (Windermere) sails for Balikpapan at 0800hrs, I felt left behind. And there is when I realised that I am in the right industry and I love my job and I wanted to go offshore and work with great people like George and Jason.

Months later, my hope came true. I went offshore working in Balikpapan, the same spot where he left. First thing when I look at the platform, I remembered George and I told Rockstar Ed (the OCM who covers him then) and exact words were "this is where they work the last time and I wish George is here with me coaching!" I sure missed him,

Not many people/colleagues knows people like myself who works behind the scenes in the shadows of great actors. The actors themselve too dont realise what impact they leave behind for us...

To me, its a short stint with big impact!

In Loving Memories.George Lock. RIP my friend.
Deen82

Deen82

3
Life As An Offshore Personnel Coordinator
 

Job Description.....there are too many invisible print!

Requirements: S.T.O.P
Preferably [b]S[/b]ingle (commitment free)
High Level of [b]T[/b]olerance
The Sane [b]O[/b]ne
High level of [b]P[/b]atience

Here I am on Friday night, clock almost touching 2200hrs, alone in the office. What am I doing at this hr? Obviously, waiting. If I am not waiting for response, I am waiting for the agent. Now, I am in desperation in search of ROV Pilot and Supervisor. My guts are telling me that the Supervisor I had booked is going to play me out. I can see the tell-tale signs!

It is not a bad position (least favorable though) it just needed an open, honest relationship between the coordinator and the crew. And its one position whom you cant ask help from your fellow colleagues.. Imagine, "Hi M, can you help me find a ROV crew, pls" *M gives a blur look* those who knows gives the middle finger or a weak smile the least...


Regardless, how many projects you handle, be it one or 10, there is always drama each day. I think we can make a reality series of it. So I am deciding to pen down the experience and share the life of an OPC..maybe some insights can improve situations... or be an inside jokes!

Caution: Story are based on true events, as true as it can be... Not to be targeted at anyone :)
Deen82

Deen82

0
paulthediver's Blog
 

Looking for work

Hello out there, Currently I'm in england and have been looking for work for some time now. Does any one know of any openings, anywhere? I have four years experience in the caribbean and I just need to get my foot in the door up here. Thanks
paulthediver

paulthediver

3
temporary's Blog
 

Awards or Salaries since 1990

I am an injured commercial diver in 1980's. I am researching any information on knowledge for the wages/salaries/agreements for offshore divers & sat divers from 1990 to 2002. Can anyone assist in suggesting where to locate this information. The Maritime Union Australia have been great help but only as far back as 2002. Much appreciated.
temporary

temporary

0
BLACKBALLED's Blog
 

rate / pay cuts in the gulf of mexico

[b]Epic divers and marine[/b] has cut beginner saturation rates from 750 and day to 450 a day, and has also lowered its entry level wages for tenders from 16 and hour to 14 an hour, but surely havent cut there rates for clients. This is pretty sad these wages are only obtained by being offshore in which the company is making the same amount of money but they believe since it is so slow in the industry that they can lower the pay standards of the diving industry. These problems are also partly to blame on the younger generation and or inexperianced workers we bring into this industry that will do the same job for less everytime one of us settles for less we are cutting our own throughts.

this was not the first straw companies cut safety, incentive, and retierment programs across the board everyone was upset but when the phone rings everyone is eager to go to work at some point the risk will not be worth the reward and hopefully employees will stand together agaist these type of disrespectfull cuts no diving personnel in the GOM available and able to work the entire year should be making under $60,000.00 a year[size="6"][/size][size="5"][/size][b][/b]
BLACKBALLED

BLACKBALLED

5
Roger's Blog
 

From: Job Scams

Gents don't know if anyone else has seen this so just a heads up. I have a history of working in W Africa but was fooled by this at first. I recieved a job offer from a majore oil company offering a two year contract> It looked good letter head matched contract looked good. Next day they were asking for Visa money...not a good sign. Total scam. I passed it on the oil company and Emassy of Record.
Roger Palmer

Source: [url=http://www.longstreath.com/community/index.php/topic/3912-job-scams/page__view__findpost__p__20933]Job Scams[/url]
Roger

Roger

1
jcROAT's Blog
 

Up Date: Divers Association

While the SLOW process of getting the Divers Association on a strong legal footing goes on, divers from the following countries have expressed Interest: South Africa, Thailand, Canada, Spain, Brunei, Malaysia, Kiribati, Qatar, Sudan, Singapore, Kuwait, United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Indonesia, France, Israel, Peru, Turkey, Taiwan.

Updates will be posted here, Commercial Diving Directory www.longstreath.com/community/index.php? and the new Facebook page www.facebook.com/pages/Divers-Association/292845044110045 and Offshore Diver http://offshorediver.com/content/

If you know any divers/tenders, supervisors, sat tech or LSS/LSTs, former or current Military Divers let them know.

I will just tell all, what my dear old Dad, rest his soul, would tell me when I got impatient: PATIENTS JACKASS! It is the punch line from a joke he told me as a kid. I don’t remember the joke but the punch line is good advice!!
×

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.

  I accept