8 Unit 8: Finding fault


Oil and water Oil and gas production are dangerous businesses ... especially at sea.


The Piper Alpha oil rig


A Discuss the questions about oil and gas. 1. How do you get oil from under the sea? 2. How do you get it to the land? 3. What about natural gas? 4. What products do we make from oil? 5. What do we use natural gas for?


B Read the case study about Piper Alpha.


1. Complete the text using a noun from the box in each space.


1976 area billion disaster oil pipes production rig room Scotland workers


2. Choose the correct sentence ending to follow each because or so in the text. Write the correct number (1–6) from the text.


4 gas escaped around a faulty pressure valve. machines compress it. nobody organized a rescue. oil production in the area went down. the disaster cost so much money. they were safe in an accident.


3. Underline all the pronouns and possessive adjectives in the text, including the sentence endings after because and so. What does each word refer to?


It was located in the North Sea = The oil rig. 118


The Deepwater Horizon oil rig


The Piper Alpha Disaster Piper Alpha was an oil rig


the North Sea near the east coast of


. It was located in .


In the 1980s, the rig was very important because its operations produced 10% of UK


. At first, the rig only .


A company called Occidental Petroleum operated the rig. The company built it in 1975 and production started in


produced oil, but the company later converted it to gas production because (1).


In the original design, areas for managers and off-duty


were separate from


operational areas so (2). However, this changed with the conversion to gas


. . The new


control room and accommodation areas were above the gas compression


Gas from under the sea takes up a lot of volume for transportation so (3). The gas is, therefore, under high pressure in the


.


In 1988, a fire started on the rig because (4). The managers were in the control


and


the fire killed them instantly. There were no other managers in charge so (5). The fire killed 167 of the 226 men on the rig. It is still the world’s worst-ever offshore over $4


, and it cost the company . Occidental Petroleum went


bankrupt because (6).


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