ABSTRACT
The year 2003 marked the fifteenth anniversary of the Piper Alpha disaster, the world’s worst offshore oil disaster. The immediate cause of the Piper Alpha disaster appears to have been the ignition of a low-lying cloud of gas condensate. The official investigation into the disaster identified as the immediate cause, a gas release following the removal of a key pump for maintenance purposes and its replacement by a blank flange. Oil multinationals are among the most aggressive players in the contemporary corporate social responsibility movement. Oil production necessitates the temporary or permanent cession of property rights by the state to the company. Nongovernmental organizations such as Amnesty International seem prepared to concede that there has been an awakening of the corporate conscience and that “there seems to be a genuine conviction that profit and principle can go together”.
