
Six weeks after the Trinity Spirit fire, there is still no public accounting of the number of fatalities and injuries. The initial reports were incomplete and inconsistent, even with regard to the number of people on the vessel at the time of the incident.
SEPCOL, the FPSO operator, no longer has a website and has issued no public statements on the incident since the day afer its occurrence. The company’s status is thus uncertain. The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission website only advises that the fire was extinguished as of 4 February.
The absence of timely information on major incidents reflects poorly on the offshore industry and those who regulate it. This is not just a Nigerian issue. It’s past time for an international standard that identifies incident information to be publicly disclosed and specifies the timeframes and methods for releasing this information.
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