ABSTRACT
Safety in the North Sea's offshore oil and gas industry left a good deal to be desired in its early years. The responsibility for regulating mining safety, together with the Mines Inspectorate and other safety bodies, had been transferred to the Health and Safety Commission (HSE) when that new and independent national safety regulator was formed in 1974. At around two o'clock in the afternoon on 27 December 1965, 13 men were killed and five injured when British Petroleum's Sea Gem drilling rig collapsed and tipped over, throwing them into the icy sea some miles off the Humber estuary. Norway's worst offshore accident occurred in 1980, when the drilling rig Alexander L. Kielland capsized in the Ekofisk oil field. Piper Alpha was a large fixed platform standing on the seabed in 448 feet of water about 120 miles north of Aberdeen, in the Piper oilfield.
