The Piper Alpha and Deepwater Horizon disasters
North Sea, 1988, and Gulf of Mexico, 2010
This case is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and events in the game do not portray real people. The account below is a factual summary, based on public sources, of the case that served as inspiration.
On 6 July 1988, the Piper Alpha platform in the Scottish North Sea exploded, killing 167 people. A safety valve on a condensate pump had been removed for maintenance; the shift handover failed to properly record the outstanding work, the pump was switched back on and gas leaked. It was the worst accident in the history of offshore oil production.
In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico exploded after a misread well pressure test, carried out under deadline and cost pressure; eleven people died and the spill lasted 87 days.
Sources
In the game
North Sea
Nordlys B platform, North Sea, 180 km off the coast of Norway, 2:05 am. The man overboard alarm went off: Eirik Lunde, safety engineer, fell from the lower deck into the freezing water.
The game borrows the platform setting and the valve test poorly done or poorly recorded under production pressure. The murder, the characters and the outcome are fiction.
