Emergency Decision Making in the Offshore Oil and Gas Industry

In July 1988, Occidental Petroleum (Caledonia) Ltd.'s North Sea oil platform, Piper Alpha, exploded with the loss of 167 lives. Although rare, such industrial disasters demonstrate that the task facing managers at high-hazard sites in an emergency is complex and characterized by time pressure, uncertainty, and danger. In this paper we examine the decision making required in a crisis by the offshore installation manager (OIM) and his or her emergency response team on an offshore oil installation. The paper summarizes the findings of a study in which we examined the selection and training of OIMs for crisis management and interviewed OIMs who had dealt with a real offshore emergency. The characteristics of the decision making that the on-scene commander requires in an offshore crisis are discussed in terms of recent developments in theories of naturalistic decision making, with particular reference to recognition-primed decision making.