The findings of an inquiry into the sinking of an anchor-handling vessel off Shetland will have a global impact on the oil industry, union leaders predicted last night.
Eight people died when the Bourbon Dolphin capsized 75 miles off Shetland nearly 12 months ago.
The commission set up to investigate the tragedy will report its findings in Norway today.
The Bourbon Dolphin went down when an operation to shift the anchor of a drilling rig went wrong. Captain Oddne Arve Remoy, 44, and his son, David, 14, were among the eight people who lost their lives when the vessel turned turtle in the Atlantic.
The commission, set up by the Norwegian government, had been due to report its findings in February but asked for more time to collate evidence, which included the testimonies of 12 Scots. The report will be presented to Norway’s justice minister, Knut Storberget, today.
Graham Tran, regional officer with the Amicus arm of the Unite union, forecast that the findings would have “global implications” for the oil and gas industry.
“We keep on saying that it is important to learn lessons from incidents such as this and we have to see what went wrong,” he said. “This report won’t just have an impact on how we do our business in the North Sea and UK waters. It is a global industry now so it will have a global impact.”
Jake Molloy, general secretary of offshore trade union the OILC, said: “There are so many aspects which need to be considered, such as the appropriateness of the vessel for the job and whether it was up to it.
“Other questions surround the depth of water for anchor-handling procedures and the role of the rig, if any, in what happened. There are also questions about vessel-to-vessel and vessel-to-rig communications.
“It is inevitable that there will be an impact on the marine industry, as well as oil and gas operations.”
In two reports submitted to the commission, doubts were raised about the ability of the Bourbon Dolphin’s crew to handle large anchors in such deep water.
Ross Watson, towmaster on the drilling rig, wrote days before the sinking in his handover report that the Bourbon Dolphin crew were “not sufficiently experienced for this type of work”.
And the skipper of the tug Olympic Hercules, Grim Are Bergtun, said: “I found the general level of experience among the crew on the Bourbon Dolphin to be too little for this type of work.”