With safety in mind

Training and the implementation of effective safety procedures in the potentially hazardous energy industry are now much better than when explosions ripped through the Piper Alpha platform, reducing that North Sea rig to a blackened smoking stump in a matter of hours.

Of the 225 men on board the platform, 167 lost their lives that fateful day in July 1988 and the tragedy remains one of the international oil industry’s worst incidents.

Taranaki branch manager Julie Beck, of training providor M&O Pacific, says training and safety procedures are much better now, with a lot of modern training relying on the lessons learned from Piper Alpha.

“They did not really have a well-tested emergency plan in the event of a major disaster and, with people not knowing exactly what to do, some mistakes were made, which compounded the problems.”

A more recent reminder for New Zealanders was the blowout at the McKee-13 rig in onshore Taranaki during the mid-1990s. Thankfully, operator Fletcher Challenge Energy brought that well under control within 24 hours, with minimal environmental damage to farmland and no loss of life or property, not even any serious injuries.

Beck says the energy industry and the Taranaki community in general are glad there have been no fatalities in the New Zealand oil and gas sector in recent years. This contrasts with a bleak year during the early 1990s when three men died in drilling rigs accidents around Taranaki.

“M&O Pacific firmly believes that effective training can essentially eliminate accidents, including the sometimes fatal incidents that seem to plague the local energy industry at times.”

Beck says M&O Pacific -– the only OPITO (Offshore Petroleum Industry Training Organisation) registered training provider in New Zealand – is currently going through a growth phase.

“There is a lot of activity in the energy sector right now, as well as a growing awareness of safety and training issues in general, which is translating into an increased workload for us,” she says.

M&O Pacific – with regional headquarters in Fremantle, Western Australia – is part of M&O Global, which offers training, consulting and management services to a wide range of industries. Its training includes custom-designed safety and emergency response programs for the oil and gas, maritime, offshore, aviation and industrial sectors.

In New Zealand, M&O Pacific is a private training establishment, with New Zealand Qualifications Authority approval. It delivers health and safety training, first aid training (from basic life support to pre-hospital emergency care), firefighting training from elementary to advanced levels, as well as marine and aviation training, such as Helicopter Underwater Escape Training (HUET).

It uses its own training facilities in Taranaki, located at New Plymouth and Oaonui, where the Maui onshore production station is located. Facilities at New Plymouth include an indoor pool, simulator module and “a lot of other equipment”, says Beck, referring to survival suits for offshore flights and 'rebreathers'. Rebreathers, breathing your own air again, if only for a few seconds, are very unnatural, with the brain telling you ‘this does not work’.

“This and the helicopter underwater training is all part of going outside your comfort zones,” she says.

M&O Pacific’s Oaonui base includes fire fighting facilities -- “the big stuff, where buildings fill with smoke and it’s dark".

“You have to put on self contained breathing apparatus and find a way to work in the dark. Then you have to find a way out in the dark. Again, you are definitely outside your comfort zone.”

M&O Pacific currently trains about 2500 people a year in New Zealand, many at New Plymouth, and also at its Auckland and Dunedin branches. Total staff numbers are about 17, mostly in New Plymouth, but some at Auckland, which runs first aid and firefighting training, and Dunedin, where the main focus is medical training.

Beck says that during the past six months, over 360 people had been through M&O Pacific’s “Bosiet” (basic offshore safety induction and emergency training) course that is approved by an Aberdeen OPITO.

“It’s becoming a requirement for everybody working offshore in New Zealand and that number seems to be growing at the time, as drilling rigs come, production platforms are positioned, and floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels are moored nearby.”

The three-day training course encompasses fire fighting training, first aid skills and sea survival, including HUET. M&O Pacific also provides a wide range of marine courses approved by the Maritime Safety Authority. Another course they run is a well control certificate course.

“We recently bought a simulator (worth about $80,000) which simulates what happens when well has a blow-out – an uncontrolled flow of oil or gas.

“That can be a submarine blowout with an offshore well or an uncontrolled flow of hydrocarbons to the earth’s surface with a land rig.”

M&O Pacific is also increasingly moving into emergency response training – making sure the companies involved in running Taranaki’s many energy projects know to respond to the media and other organisations in the unlikely event of a major emergency, either onshore of offshore.

Recent emergency response training exercises have included scenarios involving construction equipment toppling into storage tanks, trapping workers and injuring others. As well, M&O Pacific delivered its first well control certificate course in late February at Toowomba, onshore Queensland.

Beck says New Zealand staff also help run courses in several overseas countries, including Nigeria and the Central Asian country of Kazakhstan.

She sees continued growth at M&O in Auckland, continued diversification at New Plymouth, and other opportunities opening up elsewhere.

“With large companies, such as ExxonMobil, starting to explore the Great South Basin as well as others, such as Origin Energy, having active programmes off Canterbury, the East Coast and Northland, there are likely to be major opportunities in the future for service companies such as ourselves,” Beck concludes.

Next: The cable guys