The Ocean Ranger

The Ocean Ranger

The Ocean Ranger was an offshore exploration oil drilling platform that sank in Canadian waters 315 kilometres southeast from St. John's Newfoundland, on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland on February 15, 1982, with 84 crewmembers onboard. The Ocean Ranger was the largest semi-submersible, offshore exploration, oil drilling platform of the day. Built in 1976 by Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, it operated off the coasts of Alaska, New Jersey, Ireland, and in November 1980 moved to the Grand Banks. Since it was so big it was considered to have the ability to drill in areas too dangerous for other rigs. The government thought it was unsinkable, so they felt that there was no need to train a crew very well.

The disaster that took place on the Ocean Ranger had a very large effect on the way Newfoundlander’s feel about the gas and oil industry. The government examined the safety issues that led to this disaster and has implemented numerous changes to enhance the safety of the offshore workforce. The Newfoundland and Canadian government set up a combined royal commission to investigate the disaster of the Ocean Ranger and to provide recommendations to improve safety. Two years after the disaster, the royal commission on the Ocean Ranger disaster concluded that the deaths resulted not only from the storm and flaws in the rig’s design, but also from a lack of human knowledge.

Experts say the many deaths could have been prevented with better safety training and better safety precautions. Since then new and old rules have been enforced. During the late 1980's the federal and provincial governments installed boards to regulate offshore oil and gas. These boards required anyone visiting the rigs to have minimum safety training. Over the past twenty years, survival systems have improved greatly in off shore drilling. Some of the new technologies that were introduced are cold-water survival suits and improved methods of lifeboat deployment. For more safety, training requirements for offshore workers have greatly increased and new facilities have been established to make sure that the workers have the safety skills to avoid another disaster like the Ocean Ranger. Weather buoys were placed in certain areas throughout the waters in Atlantic Canada to give weather information to forecasters and mariners.

The oil companies were held responsible because they did not train their workers for emergency procedures and did not do any emergency drills. The Ocean Ranger could have survived the storm and flooding if the crewmembers had understood how the ballast system worked. The two men working in the ballast room had never been tested for what they had learned. The senior operator had only reached the halfway point in his training, but he was promoted. The Ocean Ranger did not have enough safety equipment on board for the amount of passengers they had. Families of lost crewmembers sued the companies that owned and operated the Ocean Ranger. The companies were forced to pay millions in lawsuits.

Oil companies lost a lot of money because of all the lawsuits, but Canada and other countries that used the Ocean Ranger, lost one of their sources of oil, which may have been a very good producer for them. Japan especially lost money because they invested the money into building this structure.

The first problem that led to the sinking of the Ocean Ranger was what happened when they had been hit by a huge wave. They attempted to separate the main drilling platform from the rest of the rig if they could retrieve the drill string. The drill string in an oil rig is the column, or string, of drill