Lawsuit against the Australian owners of the the Mermaid Vigilance
Mermaid Vigilance
FREMANTLE-based Mermaid Marine is one of three companies accused of actions ”tantamount to murder at sea” in a US lawsuit filed by the family of one of four oil workers who died last month during a violent storm in the Gulf of Mexico.
Two of the six men who survived the catastrophe also have filed lawsuits alleging ASX-listed Mermaid Marine and US-based companies Geokinetics Inc and Trinity Liftboat Services were grossly negligent.
They claim the crew of Mermaid Vigilance, one of Mermaid Marine’s fleet that was contracted to provide services to Houston-based Geokinetics, turned for shore instead of helping the oil workers as they abandoned the disabled Trinity II mobile platform on September 8.
They contend the Vigilance’s action in deserting the workers was both cowardly and intentional, and they allege Geokinetics was the ”ringleader”.
One of the oil workers who died was Aaron Houweling, a 33-year-old from Narangba in south-east Queensland.
Mr Houweling drowned in huge seas after shedding his life vest and pushing himself away from the tiny cork life raft that represented the last hope for survival for the oil workers.
His body was not found until September 16 after an extensive search by the Mexican navy, the state-based oil and gas producer Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), various cargo ships and oil industry support vessels. For three fearful days, in torrential rains and pounding waves, the men clung to the sides of the cork life raft as it was whipped into open seas in swift currents.
Without food, water or any form of emergency beacons or communications devices, with no survival suits to protect them, three more of the workers either drowned or died of hypothermia.
The survivors drank their own urine to slake their raging thirst. They feared sharks, became delusional and had to urge each other to hang on.
When finally the hapless craft was spotted on September 11, it had drifted more than 200 kilometres. In the webbed centre of the raft was the body of Craig Myers, a slight young man from Louisiana. His colleague Nick Reed, the son of Trinity Liftboat Services’ president Randy Reed, had also died. Kham Nadimuzzaman of Bangladesh died soon after he was rescued.
Exactly who bears responsibility for the tragedy is one of the issues likely to be decided in the US District Court in Houston next year.
Mermaid Marine is involved in some of the biggest oil and gas exploration and production operations in Australia, including Chevron’s Gorgon project. It has substantial bases at Dampier and Broome providing marine supplies for oil and gas companies operating off the north-west coast of Western Australia.
The company says it is Australia’s biggest provider of marine-based services to the oil and gas industry, and boasts: ”Safety is our Priority.”
Mermaid Marine confirmed in a statement to the ASX on Wednesday that claims had been made against it and other parties in the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas. It said that it had notified its insurers of the claims, which it denies and which it will defend.
Mermaid Marine is the operator of the Mermaid Vigilance, a 70-metre vessel conducting seismic work in the relatively shallow waters in the southern reaches of the Gulf. Mermaid Vigilance also served as a standby vessel for workers who were stationed on a portable jack-up platform or ”liftboat” called the Trinity II, which stores supplies for offshore oil operations.
In its ASX statement of Wednesday, Mermaid Marine said that none of the four workers who lost their lives was employed or on a Mermaid Marine vessel.
Mermaid Marine managing director Jeff Weber said in the statement: ”We are deeply saddened by the tragic loss of the four personnel and our thoughts and sympathies are with their families, friends and colleagues.” The company has sent a team to Mexico to investigate the incident.
The 29-metre Trinity II was a substantial structure, weighing 185 tonnes, but on the morning of September 8, as tropical storm Nate developed into a hurricane, one of Trinity II’s support legs collapsed.
So dire was the situation that the 10 workers believed it was better to abandon the platform than stay on the crippled structure.
The Vigilance at that time was nearby and had been in constant communication over several hours as Captain Jeremy Parfait on the Trinity II urged the vessel to come closer and pick up the workers.
But for reasons that are far from clear, the Vigilance turned for shore. In its ASX statement Mermaid Marine said that the Vigilance was carrying a total of 30 crew and passengers when it was caught in the storm that produced wind gusts up to 93 knots and waves in excess of 20 metres in height.
”The master of the vessel was forced to take evasive action to protect the personnel on board,” Mermaid Marine told the ASX.
It is not clear if the Trinity II workers were already in the water at this point but they were certainly in peril, not least because the canister-style inflatable life rafts blew away before the workers could deploy them into the ocean.
Instead they took to a tiny cork life raft that had an inflatable rim. The central area of the raft was webbed with netting to hold supplies, but the raft was not capable of supporting 10 men.
Some of the workers tethered themselves to the raft and others hung to the sides as storm winds gusted to more than 100km/h and the ocean currents intensified. After the Mexican navy and Pemex launched helicopters and planes, the workers initially were sighted about 13 kilometres offshore.
But conditions deteriorated before they could be rescued. Cargo ships and oil-support vessels were swung into the search and on September 11 a ship located seven of the workers.
In documents filed with the court, the two US survivors and the Myers family claim Mermaid Marine and Geokinetics jointly controlled the Mermaid Vigilance but that the vessel’s name was ”a contradiction” in terms of what happened.
”The vessel abandoned the crew of the Trinity II to their horrifying fate in the storm-ridden seas of the Bay of Campeche, and cut and ran for base and shelter,” the plaintiffs allege.
”All of these actions took place with the full knowledge of the circumstances of the Trinity II’s crew’s horrifying position, given the collapse of the Trinity II’s leg, and despite her ‘mayday’ calls.
”These intentional and conscious actions, and inactions, constitute negligence and gross negligence as those terms are defined in law and morality, or were intentional acts as the injuries and deaths were substantially certain to be caused by the actions and/or omissions of Mermaid and/or Geokinetics.”
The plaintiffs allege the actions by the Mermaid Vigilance vessel were ”anything but vigilant, but rather cowardly and tantamount to murder at sea” and that they were done ”in conjunction with” Geokinetics. They argue that Geokinetics was ”the ring leader of these conscious decisions to doom the crew of the Trinity II to their deaths and horrifying and debilitating injuries”. Attempts by BusinessDay to speak to Houston-based Geokinetics went unanswered.
It is claimed Mr Myers suffered ”severe and disabling personal injuries, mental anguish and pain and suffering before dying three days later, while floating with his fellow crew-members, abandoned in high seas in the Bay of Campeche”.
Frank Spagnoletti, the Houston lawyer representing the two survivors and the Myers family, says while the lawsuits seek financial damages, the main issue is to ensure the entire industry pays closer attention to safety issues.
”Obviously they have filed them for a number of reasons,” Mr Spagnoletti told BusinessDay. ”They saw these guys, that they were working with, dying and they do not want it to happen again. They don’t want their deaths to be meaningless.”
”If they can compel the smallest change – to have survival suits made compulsory, or to have an extra $US300 [$A304] spent per man for individual EPIRBs [emergency position indicating radio beacons] – that would help how men or women are treated in the workplace.”
Mr Spagnoletti concedes mistakes do happen but says the procedures in this case were especially inadequate and, so far at least, inexplicable. He argues that the most basic rule of maritime decency was broken when the Mermaid Vigilance did not stand by and mark the workers’ position in the roiling seas.
”While the companies might be first-world, the circumstances are not always first-world,” he said.
Source: The Seafarer Times
