LEADING drillers on the ill-fated Ocean Odyssey rig were threatened
with being sent to the Syrian desert if they did not ''buck up their
ideas'' it was claimed yesterday.
In an extraordinary chapter of evidence, one of the survivors of the
explosion which tore through the rig told of a telex message from the
operating company's base in Great Yarmouth, which was posted in the
rig's radio room.
Mr James Murphy told the fatal accident inquiry into the death of the
rig's wireless operator, Mr Timothy Williams, that the telex was aimed
at the two senior drilling supervisors on board, employed by field
operators Arco, to whom the rig was on charter at the time. Mr Williams
was the only one of the 67-man crew to die.
Mr Murphy told the inquiry the telex said they had to buck up their
ideas and do what they were told. Otherwise they would be found ''a nice
little rig out in the Syrian Desert''.
The telex, he said, was the worst example of in-fighting among Arco
personnel both onshore and offshore. There was constant conflict between
the offshore and the land-based drilling supervisors.
Mr Murphy had been told by one of the Arco men: ''There are two sides
in a drilling department. The supervisors are the practical men, then
there are the engineers who design and look to the general running of
the well.''
He said there was usually conflict between the men with practical
experience and ''the men with the degrees''.
Mr Murphy, a mud consultant from Barrow-in-Furnace, said the
atmosphere on Ocean Odyssey at the time was one of chaos and confusion.
He said Arco had two offices, in Great Yarmouth and Aberdeen, and the
representatives in both places thought they were responsible for
operations on the rig. As a result the people on board were receiving
orders form different directions.
''The confusion spilled over on to the rig. The company men would go
off and do their own thing. Generally it was a jumble to say the
least,'' he said.
When the rig exploded after being hit by a high pressure gas blowback
in September, 1988, Mr Murphy said it was generally known there was not
enough drilling fluid for drilling operations and they had run out of
the weighting agent baryte.
On the morning of the explosion he telexed a company on shore asking
for an urgent shipment of mud (drilling fluid) to be sent to the rig.
However, the rig had not drilled for 12 days and Mr Murphy said they
were getting ''earache'' from Arco's onshore bases.
He totally disagreed with a decision taken by the Arco representatives
to resume drilling that morning and said he told the other men it was
stupid.
Mr Murphy also claimed there were gas problems on Ocean Odyssey for
six weeks prior to the explosion.
When the crew were told to evacuate their rig and take to their
lifeboats he told the inquiry there was a ''screeching roar'' coming
from the rig's derrick and a huge gas cloud swirling around the top of
the rig.
He was watching the cloud to make sure the wind did not change and
blow the gas over the lifeboats when the first explosion hit the rig,
blowing a huge steel door off its hinges and sending chunks of metal
into the air.
He described the chaos as the men were unable to free the lifeboat
from its fall lines, people in the boat were vomiting, the cox collapsed
and slumped over the wheel, and men were standing up in the lifeboat.
Ocean Odyssey was drilling 130 miles off Aberdeen when the blow-out
occurred, only three months after the Piper Alpha disaster.
The inquiry in Aberdeen continues on Monday.
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