The oil and gas industry has seen its share of disasters over the years, but on July 6, 1988, disaster struck the North Sea in a never before seen at any other time in the history of the industry. The legacy of the Occidental Piper Alpha, which sat 474 feet above the sea floor and was operated by Occidental Petroleum, had come to a tragic end taking with it 167 souls. The oil and gas platform was the most productive in the North Sea when it was destroyed by fire. It was the Piper Alpha disaster that caused many changes in the oil and gas industry and highlighted what could go terribly wrong if procedures were not followed correctly. The disaster also changed the design of today's oil rigs, making them as safe as possible. Only after the finalization of the “Lord Cullen Report” would the world have a better understanding of the causes that led to the Piper Alpha disaster. . Although the investigation took place on rough roads with very little physical evidence, eyewitness information and accounts of what led to the disaster helped provide a clearer picture to investigators. It was through eyewitness accounts that it was concluded that a cloud of flammable hydrocarbon had been released into the air when a pump safety valve was removed for maintenance and the pump was restarted. It was this cloud that would eventually find an ignition source and kick off the worst oil disaster in history. To understand what went wrong with the Piper Alpha, we must first understand what the platform was and what went wrong on that terrible day in July 1988. The Piper, which began producing oil in 1976, was a large fixed platform located at 120 miles north of Aberdee... middle of paper... the accident had been felt two years earlier when a study ordered by Occidental Petroleum had shown that the gas lines connected to the Piper Alpha were dangerous due to the quantity of time needed to reduce the pressure if it ever became necessary to do so (Piper Alpha Platform Disaster). Both Claymore and Tartan should have been shut down immediately after the first call. Although the world's worst offshore disaster occurred on July 6, 1988, to this day, 30 bodies have yet to be recovered. A memorial pays homage to those souls within the beautiful Rose Garden at Hazlehead Park in Aberdeen, Scotland. It is posted with three oil field workers, above a grave, dressed in work clothes and wearing adequate protection. It is a true work of art commemorating the lives of the few who worked to bring the world its oil and gas..