UK – North Sea Rig Operator Fined £300,000 After Workers Trapped in Flooded Shaft

June 19, 2025

Ithaca Energy (UK) Limited has been fined £300,000 after a serious safety breach led to three workers being trapped in a flooding lift shaft on a North Sea offshore platform.

Incident Overview

The event occurred during a night shift on December 10, 2020, aboard the FPF-1 platform operated by Ithaca Energy. The workers were conducting routine inspections inside one of the platform’s legs when their lift began descending toward a sub-sea column. During the descent, they noticed a sudden rush of air before water began flooding into the lift.

By the time the workers managed to halt the lift using the emergency stop button, water had risen to their knees. They were able to exit safely and return to the main deck without injury.

Investigation Findings

A probe by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) revealed that multiple failures led to the incident:

Faulty equipment and incorrect procedures caused the lower shaft to flood as standing water was being cleared.
There were no water level alarms installed at the base of the shaft, leaving the control room unaware of the hazard.
Water marks on the lift doors indicated levels had risen to nearly 1.5 metres before the lift stopped.

A separate internal investigation by Ithaca suggested that, under different circumstances, water levels could have reached over three metres, potentially trapping the workers and making escape through the top hatch extremely difficult.

Legal Consequences

On June 12, 2025, Ithaca Energy pleaded guilty to safety violations at Aberdeen Sheriff Court. The company was fined £300,000 as a result.

In response to the incident, the HSE issued an improvement notice, and all confined space operations were suspended until February 2021 pending a thorough safety review.