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22 February, 2010
An inquiry into the fatal helicopter crash that killed 17 workers and crew headed to Canadian offshore oil platforms on 12 March 2009 continued earlier this month. In the days following the early February continuation, former Labrador-Newfoundland Supreme Court Justice Robert Wells, who heads the inquiry undertaken by the nation’s Transportation Safety Board, issued immediate procedural changes a full seven months before his commission’s report.
Those changes are based on testimony from local union officers and staff of Communications, Energy, Paperworkers (CEP) Union, which represents 700 workers at two of three offshore platforms some 300 kilometres off Newfoundland.
One mandate calls on the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board, the agency regulating the offshore oil industry, to ensure that a fully equipped search-and-rescue helicopter is on standby at St. John’s, Newfoundland, and ready to respond within 15 to 20 minutes of any mayday call. It took the charter service contractor, Cougar Helicopters Ltd., between 45 minutes to an hour to equip and launch a rescue helicopter last year on 12 March.
The other instruction by Wells restricts night flights to only emergencies until a dedicated helicopter is available that is equipped with an auto-hover and forward-looking infrared device in the event a rescue mission is necessary at night. Both recommended changes were accepted by the Offshore Petroleum Board and the agency was informing lead oil companies at the platforms of the directives last week, including ExxonMobil, Suncor, Husky, Chevron Canada, and ConocoPhillips.
The immediate precautionary changes stem from testimony that CEP leaders gave on 9 February, and also last October and November when the inquiry began. Officers of CEP Local 2121, representing workers at the Hibernia and Terra Nova platforms, expressed concerns that response time, non-fitting survival suits, and lack of underwater breathing devices typify a corporate culture that is lax on transport safety. They testified that in the North Sea oilfields, a separate agency singly monitors air transport to the platforms and a 15-minute response time in the event of an emergency is mandated.
The union also pointed out that Cougar’s operations in the Gulf of Mexico provides search-and-rescue emergency service in 20 minutes time.
The CEP also brought to question why no 24-hour military search-and-rescue helicopters are stationed at St. John’s, the closest point and major port serving the offshore rigs. Such military craft, called Cormorants, are located in Gander, in central Newfoundland, a travelling time of up to two hours air time to the flight paths used by Cougar. Canadian military officials have neglected to address this issue, or to join the inquiry.
Also of concern to oil workers, according to Local 2121 President Sheldon Peddle and Vice President Brian Murphy and the lone survivor of the March 2009 ditching, Robert Decker, is the fact that Cougar’s Sikorsky S-92A helicopters are equipped with a large fuel tank inside the cabin that complicates emergency exiting. Decker testified at the Wells inquiry on 6 November 2009.
Peddle said that simulators used for worker safety exercises do not have such cabin impediments.
On 12 March 2009, a Cougar Sikorsky S-92A helicopter carrying two crew members and 16 oil workers ditched into North Atlantic waters, eight minutes after oil pressure readings dropped from instruments that monitor the helicopter’s engine gearbox. Two of the 18 on board managed to get out of the cabin after the crash, with only Decker managing to survive in the frigid waters.
The issue of helicopter safety is of utmost importance to the ICEM-International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) Joint Onshore-Offshore Task Force, particularly in view of recent tragedies. On 1 April 2009, 16 workers died tragically in the North Sea when a Eurocopter Super Puma AS 332L2, operated by Bond Offshore Helicopters, ditched on its way to BP’s Miller platform in the ETAP oilfields.
On 26 February 2008, the same make craft crashed in southern Atlantic waters, killing five of 17 workers and crew heading to a Petrobras rig. That caused members of ICEM-affiliated FUB, the Oil Workers’ Federation of Brazil, to boycott the Super Pumas for the next six months. Two other Super Pumas also crashed in the South China Sea in January 2007 and November 2006. And two other ditchings occurred in North Sea waters in the first half of 2009 where, miraculously, nobody was killed.