North Sea emergency simulated

Designed to test emergency response times, there was one ‘fatality’ and two ‘casualties’ in the mock scenario organised by the Emergency Preparedness Offshore Liaison (EPOL) Group, which comprises more than 30 organisations, including trade body Oil & Gas UK.

People don’t always understand what part of the cog they are in the emergency response machine

Oil & Gas UK’s Alix Thom

Police Scotland, the Marine Coastguard Agency and the RAF were among those who dealt with the ‘offshore incident’ that was acted out at the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre last week.

The half-day ‘drama’ centred on a crane dropping a 10-tonne container as it was lifted from a supply vessel onto an oil producing platform.

As well as death and serious injury, the scenario unfolded to include shutdown of the pretend platform and an oil spill from a subsea pipeline hit by the container that ended up plunging into the sea.

Events took place across two stages: one representing an offshore platform and the other indicating what was happening in response on land.

Roles in the scenario were played by personnel that work in emergency response or who have positions in oil and gas that would result in their involvement if there was a real-life incident.

“Managing the response to emergencies or crises can be daunting, particularly when this is in addition to ‘the day job’,” said Oil & Gas UK employment and skills issues manager Alix Thom.

“But industry takes its responsibility to safety extremely seriously and that’s why companies hold their own emergency exercises on a regular basis. This was the first emergency response seminar organised by EPOL and it went extremely well. People don’t always understand what part of the cog they are in the emergency response machine but it is extremely beneficial to understand how different organisations and agencies work together during a crisis.”