Ocean Ranger

The Ocean Ranger was an offshore exploration oil drilling platform that sank in Canadian waters 315 kilometres (175 nautical miles) southeast from St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland on February 15, 1982, with 84 crew onboard. There were no survivors.

The Ocean Ranger was the largest semi-submersible, offshore exploration, oil drilling platform of the day. Built in 1976 by Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, it operated off the coasts of Alaska, New Jersey, Ireland, and in November 1980 moved to the Grand Banks. Because of her massive size, she was considered to have the ability to drill in areas too dangerous for other rigs.

Considered unsinkable, training of the crews on board was insufficient at best. She was the Titanic of the offshore oil exploration industry.

On Sunday, February 14 1982, a vicious unexpected winter storm with 100 mph winds and 60 foot swells developed south of Newfoundland and headed for the Grand Banks. Around 7:00 P.M. (NST), with seas over 100 feet high, the main deck of the Ocean Ranger reported to the Mobil Oil shore base in St. John's that they had been hit by an especially huge wave and would attempt to separate the main drilling platform from the rest of the rig if they could retrieve the drill string. This had been done only once or twice before. They did not succeed.

Sometime after 7 P.M. (NST), the Ocean Ranger reported another giant wave had crashed over the rig, smashing through the ballast control room port hole. The port hole was only 30 feet above the water line and did not have its steel storm plate installed. Water rushed in, soaking the control panel and shorting out its analogue relays, causing the rig to list to about 10 degrees.

The crew removed the relays, rinsed them in clean water to get the salt out of them, and dried them with a hairdryer. But when they reinstalled the relays and turned on the power, the control panel was still wet and shorted out again.

The crew then attempted to manually start the pumps to right the rig, and here made the critical error that led to its demise. There were no manuals on board explaining the ballast control system. Knowledge about it had been passed from one crew rotation to the next by word of mouth. Instead of emptying the ballast tank on the side where the rig was listing, they instead pumped in more water, increasing the list to about 15 degrees.

Its fate was sealed. At 1:30 a.m. February 15, 1982, the Ocean Ranger radioed it was abandoning ship.

Employee and company perceptions of the rig being unsinkable had resulted in a poor record of safety drill practise. During the actual evacuation attempt, many crew members did not even make it into the lifeboats, instead jumping over the side into the cold waters of the North Atlantic, to perish within minutes in the heavy seas.

Rescue attempts by helicopter and the attending supply ship, Seaforth Highlander, were hampered by the storm and cold water. The men in the lifeboat caused it to capsize when they all stood on one side and tried to climb a rescue line thrown to them from the supply ship. The Seaforth Highlander then launched its own large inflatable life raft, but it floated away just out of reach of the freezing and drowning men. The men on the supply ship then used long poles with hooks on the ends to try to catch the men stranded in the sea, but to no avail. All hands aboard the Ocean Ranger perished, and at 3:38 a.m. on February 15, 1982, the rig capsized and sank to the floor of the Grand Banks.

Over the next week, 22 bodies were recovered from the North Atlantic, most without a mark, the men having died in the cold water for lack of survival suits. Autopsies showed those men had drowned.

A Canadian Royal Commission spent two years looking into the disaster. The commission concluded that the Ocean Ranger had design and construction flaws, particularly in the ballast control room, and that the crew lacked proper safety training, survival suits, and equipment.

It also concluded that inspection and regulation by United States and Canadian government agencies was ineffective. In addition to key recommendations for Canada's offshore oil and gas industry, the commission recommended that the federal government invest annually in research and development for search and rescue technologies, such as improving the design of lifesaving equipment—a commitment that has been met in every fiscal year since 1982.