On the night of 6 July 1988, the Piper Alpha oil platform in the North Sea exploded and collapsed, killing 167 men in less than two hours in what remains the world's deadliest offshore oil disaster. Many pieces of media have sought to shed light on what happened, but just what was the shocking chain of events that led to the Piper Alpha Incident?
The platform, located 190 kilometres north-east of Aberdeen, Scotland, was operated by Occidental Petroleum (Caledonia) Ltd and accounted for around 10% of the UK's oil and gas production at the time. Originally designed to handle only oil, it had been converted in 1978 to include gas production, which introduced new operational risks and complexities.
