Disaster averted

Press, 25 November 1981, Page 8

Disaster averted

NZPA-Reuter London A potential oil-rig disaster in the North Sea appeared to have been averted yesterday when a tug stopped a drifting Norwegian rig with 112 men on board from colliding with another manned platform, Norwegian officials said. A Coast guard spokesman at Stavanger said that the rig Phillips SS, which broke its anchorage in gale-lashed seas shortly after midnight, was brought to a halt just 80m from a second Norwegian platform, the Tor, after the tug managed to get a line on board the drifting rig.

“The situation is now under control,” the Coast Guard spokesman said. The rigs are in the Ekofisk Field about 288 km east of Aberdeen, Scotland, the area where the Norwegian accommodation rig Alexander Keilland capsized in March last year with the loss of 123 lives. It was the world’s worst oil-rig disaster. Like the Phillips SS, the Alexander Keilland was owned by Phillips Petroleum. Overnight weather reports said there were 70 to 90 knot gales and 12m waves in the area of yesterday's incident. A Royal Air Force spokesman said the situation remained tense with only one line secured to the rig.

“With winds in the area at 70 knots and gusting 90, the situation could turn for the worse at any second,” he said.

Meanwhile, the British oil rig Transworld 58 was in difficulties in the same area after losing four of its eight anchors, an air force spokesman said.

Transworld 58 has 70 people on board and rescue officials Slid it was planned to evacuate 54 of them by helicopter.