BETWEEN FIRE AND WATER

Earthquakes, flood, tsunami, volcanic eruptions, landslides, hurricanes - the list goes on of natural disasters accompanied, unfortunately, by loss of life and beyond man's control, despite technical progress.

Azerbaijan's oil workers experienced a major storm on 4 December. And, unfortunately, lives were lost. At first, the gale-force wind tore a cabin containing three workers from a pier at Neft Daslari [Neftyanniye Kamni] into the sea. Efforts to rescue the men were in vain and all three are still listed as missing. But a short time later, a tragedy occurred which overshadowed the accident at Neft Daslari. 

Late in the evening of 4 December the country's media was full of news of a fire at a SOCAR [Azerbaijani state oil company] production platform at the Gunasli [Guneshli] field. At first, there were no reports of any casualties. But the next day it was announced that of the 63 men working on the platform only 33 had been rescued, 29 were missing and one person had died. Later, another three bodies of oil workers were pulled from the sea (as this magazine went to press).

SOCAR Vice-President Xosbaxt Yusifzada said after the incident that the hurricane-force wind on that day reached 40-42 m/sec, or more than 140km an hour. The most unfortunate thing was that the hurricane lasted for 27 hours, whereas it usually goes on for 5-6 hours. The height of the waves was 10-11 metres. The outcome was that the high-pressure gas pipeline, through which gas passes to be pumped into the wells, broke down. The fracture in the pipeline led to a fire which almost immediately enveloped a significant section of the platform.

To escape the fire, the platform team took to two life-boats - one carrying 27 men, the other 33 - while three more took shelter on the platform. The hermetically-sealed boats were lowered several metres and hung on cables. The oilmen decided not to fully lower the boats onto the water because the raging sea could have smashed them against the pilings of the platform. Within an hour Emergency Ministry ships Vikhr-9, Topaz, Avior and Samir Quliyev, which were operating in the Gunasli field area, had reached the blazing platform. The ships' attempts to moor and rescue the people in the boats were unsuccessful - the waves could have smashed the vessels against the piles and could have led to the destruction of the whole platform.

The tragedy occurred at 22.45: the cable on one of the life-boats broke, unable to withstand the force of the wind, and it began to hang in a vertical position. The boat crashed against the platform and the 33 men fell into the sea. Showing true heroism, the crew of the Topaz approached the stricken men and with incredible strength managed to rescue four of them, one of whom died later on board the vessel.

Through happy circumstance and by God's will, the second life-boat was swept by the wind under the platform where it was stuck between piles which prevented otherwise inevitable destruction. 

By morning, helicopters of the Emergencies Ministry, the Border Service and the AZAL CJSC had managed to reach the scene of the tragedy. One of the helicopters was able to land on the helicopter pad on the platform and unload rescue workers. They dragged out the 27 oilmen in the boat between the piles, and also another three taking refuge on the platform, where they spent several hours between life and death. The search for the men from the other boat yielded nothing. It would be several days before the bodies of the other six oilmen are found, 50-70 km from the platform itself, on the border with the Kazakh sector of the Caspian. Their shattered boat was also found 50 km from the platform.

By order of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, a state commission was set up, headed by Prime Minister Artur Rasizada, to investigate the causes of the disaster, organize recovery measures and the search for the missing people and to assist the families of the oilmen, and a day of mourning was announced on 6 December. Criminal proceedings were instituted for the disaster at the platform against article 225.2 ("Infringement of fire safety regulations leading to grave consequences").

In terms of scale, this tragedy was the biggest in the history of Azerbaijan's oil industry. Until now, the most number of victims recorded was when a drilling platform sunk on 21 November 1957 with 22 oilmen on board as a result of a storm of similar ferocity. At the time, huge waves by Caspian standards completely swept a drilling platform into the sea at the Neft Daslari field, along with a team of the famous oil worker, Mikhail Kaverochkin. The rescue operation was in vain and no trace of any of the men was found. Neft Daslari has become a symbolic tomb for missing oilmen.

The extent of the present tragedy shook the whole public. Some of the media and social networks accused the SOCAR management of failing to observe elementary safety standards and to provide up-to-date life-boats and reproached them for the fact that the workers were not evacuated from the platform in time, despite the weather reports. At the same time, many cited the example of BP, which in over 20 years of operations in Azerbaijan, has not had a single fatal casualty involving the sea. However, the whole world still remembers the explosion at the BP platform in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 when 11 people were killed, and a vast area of the sea was polluted with oil. In other words, no company, however modern it may be, can have an absolute guarantee against a disaster occurring.

It should also be taken into account that the age of the "oldest" BP platform in Azerbaijan (at the Ciraq field) is only 17 years; the platforms at the Azeri field were put up in 2005-2008 and are classed among the most modern. Platform No 10 at Gunasli has been working for 30 years, but although it had a complete overhaul in 2007, it still does not compare with present-day equivalents.

On the other hand, experts point out that the practice of evacuating workers from a platform in gale-force wind is not applied in the Caspian. For example, the head of the oil workers human rights committee, Mirvari Qahra-manli, who could not be reproached for loyalty to SOCAR, also notes that the platform should not have been closed down. "Many people write to say that the workers should have abandoned the platform. But they don't understand that it is a well where work goes on day and night. Work can't be stopped. Do you know what it costs to keep one well up and running? Stopping work causes great damage to the country. Work goes on all the time," Qahramanli says. In the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian winds blow practically all the time and this is no reason to close down a platform. That is not the practice among foreign companies conducting operations in the Caspian, either.

Indeed, warnings about the hurricane were issued and, as the rescued workers say, the appropriate measures were taken. "We were warned to expect heavy winds. They said everyone should support one another. Movement outside the living quarters was forbidden. In other words, all work was suspended," CBC was told by one oil worker, Bahruz Babayev. The workers were also supplied with life jackets. The life-boats, which each take 42 people and were, incidentally, made in Korea, were hermetically sealed and equipped with food and water for several days. And even the decision to take to the life-boats, despite the raging hurricane at sea, was the correct one. Although afterwards it transpired that the living quarters was in no way exposed to the fire, at the time of the fracture of the gas pipeline no-one could guarantee that the platform would not go up. But despite all these measures, the tragedy could not be averted.

Incidentally, the oil workers completely discount the possibility of sabotage. According to Xosbaxt Yusif-zada, the hurricane was the cause of the fire and there is no question of sabotage. Qahramanli also rejects the possibility of sabotage: "Oil workers are devoted to each other. They are like one big family. You wouldn't get a kamikaze at sea; that's impossible."

And the main question remaining is the technological capability and readiness of the platform itself to withstand a hurricane. How long ago was an inspection made of this pipeline, the fracture of which caused the fire to break out? How often are emergency training drills held on platforms? When was the last time the life-boats and cables supporting them were checked? Were the cables themselves capable of holding loaded life-boats for several hours? There are many such questions the law-enforcement bodies need to investigate.

SOCAR and the state will, of course, assist the families of the oilmen who died or were injured. The Cabinet of Ministers has adopted a decision to allocate 15,000 manats to the families of each deceased or missing oil worker from platform No 10. For its part, SOCAR will pay the families of the deceased compensation to a sum of 20 times their salary, the ANS TV channel was told by the head of the company's department for monitoring the organization of medical services, Fuad Alizada. The children of the deceased will receive every month up to 2.5 times the salary until they turn 18. At the same time, if the children of the deceased are studying at university on an extra-mural basis, they will be paid compensation of up to 2.5 times salary up to the age of 23. 

Besides this, according to the Minister for Labour and Social Protection, Salim Muslimov, all the oil workers were provided with life insurance policies and the families of the deceased will receive from 80 to 140,000 manats depending on salary, age, number of children and other factors.

Of course, no compensation can bring back a dead father, son, husband or brother. The main lesson of this tragedy should not just be to punish those guilty if they are found, but rather to adopt measures to prevent a repetition of such incidents.

It is thanks to oil that Azerbaijan has achieved stunning results in economic development over the past decade. Salaries, pensions and benefits have increased, major infra-structure projects are being implemented and specific financial reserves have been accumulated, enabling us to withstand the negative economic processes in the region. And a fire or a disaster at any oil platform, even if no human lives are lost, reduces the country's income at such difficult times for the economy.

About 900 tonnes of oil and one million cubic metres of gas are produced every day from platform No 10. These volumes have now been lost from SOCAR's overall production. Experts are unable to say as yet precisely when the fire, which has already spread to the wells, will be put out. At the same time, the rebuilding of the platform will also cost considerable money and time.

Most of SOCAR's platforms were built in the 1970s and 1980s, not to mention the piers at Neft Daslari, the foundations of which were laid way back in the 1950s. And it will require considerably more attention to be paid to questions of repairs and updating this whole infrastructure. In general, there must be a tightening of control over observation of safety technology by workers and the heads of platforms and their sub-structures. After all, it is no secret that most of us are not very attentive when it comes to our own safety, believing we know it all and are more professional than, for example, our workmate who suffered at his place of work.

But a tragedy leading to loss of life only happens once in our lives. And for it never to happen at all, it is time at a subconscious level to give priority to observing safety standards, especially those working in such an important, prestigious but at the same time dangerous profession as the oil industry. 

Then SOCAR will also be able to report about a figure of "zero" in its graph of incidents with a fatal outcome in industry, and the tragedy at platform 10 will for ever remain in our memories as the biggest tragedy in the history of Azerbaijani oil production.