Terry Macalister
Tuesday July 18, 2006
Shell might have prevented the death of two oil workers in 2003 if it had properly repaired a hole in a corroding pipeline on the Brent Bravo platform, a fatal accident inquiry in Aberdeen concluded today.
Colin John Harris, the sheriff, said there were also “defects in the system of working” that had contributed to the accident in which Sean McCue, 22, and Keith Moncrieff, 45, lost their lives.
“The accident … might reasonably have been prevented if an appropriate temporary repair had been applied to the hole on the closed-drain degasser rundown line, such as a fully engineered repair and not a repair using a neoprene patch and jubilee clips,” the sheriff concluded.