Alexander L
The These should Phillips Petroleum character One thing and front of one rig or another, taken place since the 123 died. socialism It has bosses tested for metal fatigue their with all JUST why did the 123 oil rig workers die when the Kielland collapsed last Thursday night? For the moment leave aside the technical short answer is xm. staggering figure was the after-tax profit made by last year. Phillips were the owners and operators of the doomed rig.
Like all the other oil companies operating in the North Sea, they have made a fortune out of their operations. Where have those fortunes gone?
certain, they have not gone ensuring the safety of those who work on the rigs so that the giant profits can be amassed.
Perhaps it is unfair to single out Phillips. They just happened to be the ones who were found out; it just happened that it was a rig owned by them where disaster struck first. But sooner or later, on such a disaster was almost bound to occur. This has become clear through the investigations, partial though they are, which have been established that the Alexander L Kielland was of a design which had not been fully - one of the possible reasons for the collapse of the rig. Such tests have only been conducted since 1977 and the Kielland was designed before that date — as were virtually disaster. all the rigs operating in the North Sea.
It has now been admitted that what safety checks do take place on North Sea rigs are, in the words of the Sunday Times 'intrinsically fallible'. So "fallible' are these checks that they would be unlikely to detect a simple welding failure — the other main candidate as the immediate cause of the place. added.
safety work the past reported unionisation on the North Sea.
oil companies. Praised by allowed go than a drop in the ocean.
But there is nothing 'natural' or 'unavoidable' about the collapse of the Kielland. An engineering lecturer said on BBC-TV's Nationwide last Friday night that greater safety checks could have taken 'But they would be very expensive,' he If trade unions were allowed to openly organise on the rigs then the killings might have been avoided. Unions do tend to be more concerned than But attempts to organise the rigs have been met not only with hostility but gangster-like tactics from the owners of the rigs. Socialist Challenge has in physical, attacks on union militants who have tried to establish a degree of All of which ties in with the philosophy of the Western governments they may be; politicians may scramble after each other to sit on their boards; their vast profits may largely untaxed, but these companies are the pirates of the 20th century. Nothing must stand in the way of their profits. And for them the cost of 123 dead is little more