(105d) Process Safety Lessons from the Oceangate Titan Implosion

The OceanGate Titan submersible vessel was lost during an expedition in June 2023 to visit the wreck of RMS Titanic, which rests 3,800 metres below sea level. At this depth, the pressure is over 350 times that at sea level. During this expedition, the vessel walls failed and the submersible imploded, killing all five people aboard, including OceanGate’s CEO.

There are process safety lessons that can be learned from this incident that are directly applicable to the processing industry, especially when innovating and developing new processes, equipment, materials or procedures. This paper will identify those lessons and discuss how they can be incorporated to prevent similar events occurring in your process, including connecting these findings to the CCPS’s 20 elements of Risk Based Process Safety.

Innovation is at the heart of the processing industry, and by analyzing this incident we can learn lessons to help continue that drive going forward into the future – safely.