In October 2022, Robbie Robson, 38, a British offshore worker, travelled to Qatar for an eight-week contract in the oilfields of the Persian Gulf. Robson was handsome, ambitious, and determined to do well by his family. The job was an attractive opportunity: after years working on vessels, and as a pipelayer, he was pursuing safer and more lucrative positions piloting the remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) that are used to monitor underwater structures. It was a long stint away, but at least he’d be back to enjoy Christmas in South Tyneside with his partner, Kristie Graham, 39, her daughter Willow, 10, and Sefa, their 17-month-old son, in the new house they’d just bought.
Until then, his home would be the Seafox Burj, a three-legged jack-up rig planted in the shallow waters of the Al-Shaheen oil field, 80km from land. Robson hated being away, but stayed connected to Graham and his friends over WhatsApp. From his vantage point in the middle of the Gulf, he’d take photos of dramatic sunsets and send them to Graham. It was a window into the strange world of offshore workers and a sign, for her, of the way he could always find the positive in any situation.
Yet aspects of this particular job were wearing on him. When he first arrived on the Burj, he was surprised to learn that he was to be sharing a cabin with two other men, who, like him, were working for Film-Ocean, a Scottish subsea contractor that supplies ROVs (they look a bit like a box of propellers and robotic arms) and personnel to projects around the world. One of the men, Christopher Begley, 38, was a rosy-cheeked chap from Scotland. They got on well, bonding over football. There were no problems with the third team member either, but after a week or two, he had to leave the rig due to illness. His replacement was Scott Forrest, 44, another Scottish oil man. Forrest was a large guy, well over 6ft tall, but he didn’t make a big impression on Robson, who described him to Graham as “a bit boring”.
Like most cabins on rigs and vessels, Room 230 on the Burj was small and simple: four bunks with privacy curtains and a desk. But the men, who were working nights, were on the same shift rotation. After 12 hours on the job, they’d bundle into the cabin. Their sleep was frequently disrupted by the rig’s alarm system, which would blast through a public address system in their room. By Robson’s account, it was “oversensitive” – reacting to gas sensors he believed were well within safe levels – but each time it sounded they’d have to respond as if it was an emergency. Robson would send Graham pictures of himself in full breathing apparatus on the helipad: “We’re back on the deck again … ” It could take up to an hour before the crew were allowed back down. Sometimes this would repeat four or five times during the day, when the ROV team were meant to be sleeping.
Robson expressed his frustration to Graham. “He said it was an absolute joke,” she says. “[That] I can’t believe this is the expectation for eight weeks.” She encouraged him to complain, which he did, but he was told there was no alternative accommodation available. As Graham understood it, there was no animosity between the men. “He wasn’t happy with the situation,” says Graham, “but he made the best of it.”
Six weeks after he set foot on the rig, Robson would be dead, Begley in hospital, and Forrest in a Qatari jail charged with murder.
* * *
The last time Graham and Robson spoke was 11 December 2022. Graham awoke that morning to a message wishing her happy birthday, a delivery of flowers at the door; whenever he was away, Robson prepared well for the moments he’d miss. Graham took the children to her parents’ house, but it wasn’t until later that day that she and Robson finally managed to talk. It was a 10-minute chat on the phone; the children were tired and it was a school night, so they decided to keep it brief. Robson told Graham he’d call her back at the end of his shift. He never did.
Around the time Graham was putting the kids to bed, Robson was, most likely, sitting at the desk in Room 230, working at a computer. That’s where he was at 11pm Arabia Standard Time, when Forrest entered the room behind him. Earlier that day, Forrest, who had been sleeping, had awoken in a state of panic. According to his account, given to the Qatari police, this was caused by lack of sleep; his mind had been disturbed “by the sound of the sea” and the repeated alarms. Forrest was, he said, convinced there were people on the rig who were going to attack him. Roaming the Burj in search of an item to protect himself, he had found a 10kg weight used to provide ballast to the ROVs, which he had stashed in the cabin. Now he raised the iron bar and struck Robson repeatedly, killing him with multiple blows to the head. Forrest wrapped Robson’s body up in towels and concealed him in one of the beds. Then he went to the canteen.
Begley was there, eating at one of the tables. Forrest calmly sat down beside him. Begley declined to be interviewed for this piece, but according to court documents, he asked Forrest where Robson was, and was told that Robson was feeling unwell and was taking a rest. Forrest then returned to the cabin, where he continued to clean up the crime scene. Shortly afterwards, Begley headed off to check on Robson. Opening the cabin door, he noticed clean towels on the side; the curtain to Robson’s bunk was drawn shut. Then Forrest attacked again, striking Begley from behind with the weight. Begley took two blows to his head, but fought back. The men struggled. “Sorry, I have to do this,” Forrest told him. This time, though, the commotion roused the attention of other crew members. “They had to break down the door,” Begley’s father, Dennis, told the Scottish Sun, “but they were able to get the attacker off of him. They probably saved his life.”
Begley was hurried to the first aid room, and the rig captain, Dean Young, was informed. By now, though, Forrest was ready to give himself up. According to court documents, he arrived at Young’s office to declare he had a problem. “Is this the assault problem?” Young asked. Forrest replied that there was another thing: he had killed Robson. A guard was placed on the office door, and Young went to check Room 230. The curtain to the bunk was pulled back, and Robson’s body was found. Attempts were made to revive him, but it was too late.
By dawn, the Qatari police were on a helicopter to the Burj. As an arrest was made, Begley was transported to hospital, and Robson’s body taken to the mainland, news was already spreading among the close-knit offshore community. One oil and gas worker showed me a screenshot of a message apparently sent by an onshore project manager in Qatar who was dealing with the incident: “Need some help … got a situation I don’t think anyone in this industry has experienced … ”
Back in the UK, Graham was still unaware of the events that had taken place that night. In the morning, there were no messages from Robson. By midday, she was starting to grow worried. “Something just felt different,” she says. Throughout the day, Graham continued to message Robson, asking him to call back. A friend reassured her that the lack of response was probably just a problem with the comms system on the rig. But if the comms were down, Graham thought, then his phone wouldn’t be ringing out when she called. “And then it wasn’t ringing,” she says. “And I was like: ‘That’s just not right.’”
At 10pm, the police knocked on her door.
* * *
Today, Graham is living in the house she and Robson bought before he died. It’s on a quiet street in Cleadon, not far from Roker beach, with its pier that curls into the North Sea. The renovations they planned have been completed, and framed photos line the crisply painted hallway, Robson smiling in them. When I visit in August, Graham has just got back from the gym she owns with her sister – she’s poised, smartwatch on her wrist. We’re joined by their friend, Andrew Quinn, 40, who has just finished a coast-to-coast run in memory of Robson, and we sit around a breakfast bar as they describe the close-knit friendship group they all shared since school. Graham and Robson had known each other for years before they got together in 2019. Life since then, she says, was “beautiful … and so much fun”.
Robson, they tell me, was someone with a zest for life, always joking. When the pandemic hit, says Graham, it was the first time they could spend several months together as a couple without him having to go offshore, and he brought a lightness to the house, hiding tiny water pistols so they could jump out and surprise each other: “And the bond he had with Willow, I don’t think she would have got through the pandemic without Robbie’s jokes.” Robson’s boundless social energy was matched by his enthusiasm for trying new things. He was “all the gear and no idea”, says Quinn, and the loft, Graham pointedly adds, is full of it: paddleboards, kayaks, snowboards, decks, hundreds of records …
Robson applied the same focus to his career. Growing up in the north-east, says Graham, the jobs are at sea: “If you know a hundred people, half of them will be connected to offshore work.” But he was, Quinn says, a homebody at heart. Being stuck on rigs for weeks on end could be a struggle. By his early 30s, Robson was eager to take on more stimulating, better-paid work. Two of his close friends were already working as ROV pilots, and Robson wanted to follow suit. With their encouragement, he threw himself into the challenge. Now, when he was away, his cabin would be full of schematics, stacks of books, paperwork; at home it was the same story.
At first, most of Robson’s work had been in the North Sea – on rigs and vessels, working two or three weeks offshore followed by the same amount of time back home. When he started taking on ROV work, it became more erratic, as Robson jumped on opportunities whenever they became available to build up his experience. It took him everywhere: Texas, Borneo … “All over,” says Graham, and the time away grew longer, too: “Eight weeks on, two weeks off. Then he’d get a different job and it was 10 weeks on, six days back at home.”
After Graham and Robson became a couple, and Sefa was born, he became even more determined. Robson was racing to pass his ROV “competencies” and get to a position that would finally give him more control over the jobs he took. Graham had always been supportive of his work, but it had been hard raising Sefa with him away for so long. Robson had missed a lot, too. That was one of the reasons he went to Qatar, says Graham: “He said: ‘This is my last long job away.’”
Since Robson’s death, the friendship group has tightened. Graham, Quinn and a number of others now share the same tattoo bearing Robson’s initials. In the immediate aftermath, Quinn was on the phone to the British embassy, and friends with connections in the industry did their best to help Graham find out more. The flow of information did not come readily, and navigating the Qatari legal system from afar was a nightmare of its own. Graham and Robson were unmarried, so she was not recognised as family. She was involved in initial introductions to a solicitor, but after that, Graham says, “They didn’t acknowledge anything I said. I had to go through Denise and Rob, Robbie’s parents, saying, ‘Can you send this? Ask this?’, because every email I sent I got nothing back.”
For a long time, Graham believed she would have to fly to Qatar for the trial; she was having nightmares about the prospect of facing Forrest in court. But the dates kept changing, and she was eventually advised that, since it would be a brief hearing rather than the lengthy jury trial you would expect in the UK, it might be easier to remain at home (in a Qatari criminal case of this kind, three judges are presented with evidence and decide on a verdict and sentence). The option to accept compensation from Forrest was raised by the solicitor (the award of “blood money” is common practice in Qatar, and the figure put forward was QR200,000, about £43,000), but it was rejected by the family.
At first, charges of premeditated murder were on the table. Graham was told that Forrest could expect to receive the death penalty. But when the judgment and sentencing hearing finally took place, on 27 December 2023, the judges were swayed by a psychiatric assessment of Forrest, conducted six months after the crime had taken place. It found no sign of neurological conditions that could have explained his behaviour, nor evidence of drug or alcohol abuse. It noted that by Forrest’s own account, he had a “good relationship” with his two colleagues on the rig, and “no significant disagreements” happened between them. The working conditions, however, were described as “unusually difficult”. The challenging sleeping arrangement and night shifts were exacerbated by the alarms, which could go off up to eight times a day, putting the workers “under unprecedented nervous pressure”. A feeling of panic and paranoia, Forrest said, began to build in him the day before the murder. By then, he was “living in a dream”.
The report concluded that “it was most likely Forrest was suffering from an acute psychotic episode … caused by the inability to get sufficient rest and regular sleep for weeks on end, in addition to severe nervous pressure caused by a turbulent work environment”. If proven, it stated, his responsibility for the crime “is partial”. The court agreed. Forrest was convicted of murder without intent – comparable to manslaughter – and received a 10-year sentence, after which time he will be deported back to the UK.
Graham couldn’t believe it. To her, 10 years did not seem like justice. As she saw it, Forrest had hidden the murder weapon in advance – evidence that the crime was premeditated. She also learned that the day before the attack, Forrest had made a request to leave the rig on a scheduled helicopter due to depart hours after the murder. She believes he had planned his escape. Forrest had said he was dealing with a family emergency, but “the police checked his phone and there was no sign of any emergency”, says Graham. It was disturbing to Graham that Forrest was taken at his word when he described having no memory of his actions at the time – and that his mental state was only assessed months afterwards. The family lodged two appeals, but they were unsuccessful.
Since then, Graham has grown increasingly distrustful of the process. The solicitor was appointed by Film-Ocean to act for the family – with hindsight, she wishes they had obtained one independently. Graham had to push to see the full court files, and when she was finally able to access the information, months later, she struggled to make sense of it. “A lot of things don’t add up.”
Film-Ocean, which in a statement at the time described the incident as “non-work related”, was initially supportive of Graham, helping to repatriate Robson and pay for the legal costs, but when the murder charge was downgraded, Graham says it went quiet. She is now pursuing a civil case against Film-Ocean, which she believes failed in its duty of care. (When contacted for this article, Film-Ocean said it was unable to comment while the litigation was ongoing, except to say that it did not consider Graham’s account to be an accurate reflection of events.)
Graham cannot accept that Forrest’s actions amounted to anything less than murder, but she still finds herself wondering if Robson would be alive were his complaints about the cabin sharing taken more seriously. Why were the crew expected to endure conditions that were evidently causing discomfort? Why were Robson’s complaints ignored? Was it really a freak occurrence, or does the industry have a case to answer?
Freelancers like Robson follow work wherever it leads, often into jurisdictions with varying levels of oversight. In many ways, companies like Film-Ocean do the same; both are part of the byzantine network of agencies, contractors and operators that keep offshore projects running. It’s an intensely competitive industry. In the race to secure work, employee wellbeing may not always be the first priority.
“These people are going away for weeks and months at a time, away from their family, sacrificing a lot,” says Graham. “The working conditions and the living conditions should be above par. Not just, ‘Get what you’re given and shut up.’”
* * *
Few working environments come as intense as an oil rig. They are combustible places, literally and figuratively. The intensity of the work, pumping fuel from beneath the ocean floor, is matched by the psychological challenge of long periods spent with strangers in an isolated setting. As Jake Molloy, who has recently retired after decades working offshore and as an RMT union leader in Scotland, puts it: “There’s a saying: ‘I can work with you, but I don’t have to like you.’ That doesn’t apply offshore.”
For the most part, it’s a fraternal community. Arguments can occur, but serious violence is rare. More often, the turmoil is silently whirring within a worker’s own head. Offshore workers are 15 times more likely to die by suicide than those working on land; 40% experience suicidal thoughts. “People just disappear and you find them, days later, in some corner of the rig,” says Molloy. “The environment, the isolation, enables that.”
In the UK, workers should work for two to three weeks before getting the same amount of time off. Cabin sharing is normal, but it should usually be no more than two people, working opposite shifts, or “back to back”, so when one person is sleeping, they have the cabin to themselves. These regulations are rooted in an understanding of the importance of quality rest and privacy for the wellbeing of workers and their safety.
Beyond the North Sea, in Africa and the Middle East, it is normal for offshore workers to spend much longer stints away from land. A four-week rotation is normal, but a job could easily push to six, or longer still. (Expat oil and gas workers from western countries tend to enjoy far better terms than migrant workers from countries like Pakistan or the Philippines.) And while the industry as a whole has significantly improved its safety record, Molloy claims that when it comes to “mental health, occupational health, the ability to get quality of rest, quality of sleep … they’re failing, absolutely miserably.”
Robson got his work in the Gulf through an agency called Tech Professionals (which is also named in the family’s civil action). Based in Banbury, Oxfordshire, it supplies engineers and technical specialists to subsea and offshore projects around the world. That’s how Robson was offered a contract with Film-Ocean, a relatively small independent contractor based in Ellon, Scotland, and one of many firms hustling for work from offshore operators; it owns assets, like ROVs, ploughs and trenches, and hires them out. In this case, it was providing services for the North Oil Company, a joint venture between QatarEnergy and TotalEnergies. (The rig itself was owned by Seafox, a Dutch firm.)
Rob Pattenden, director of Tech Professionals, denies the agency failed in its duty of care, stating that it was in contact with Robson throughout the contract and was not made aware of any complaints. The project, he says, was typical of many of the contracts undertaken by its contractors, “up until the moment that a disturbed individual carried out a violent and unprovoked attack”. He adds that “nothing that we could have done would have ever prevented such a tragic and unforeseen incident”.
When asked to clarify if it is considered standard for three crew members on the same rotation to be sharing a cabin, and whether Robson was aware this would be the case before he arrived on the rig, Pattenden will not comment, citing ongoing legal action, but says: “Whilst the most common form of accommodation for offshore work is single accommodation, it’s certainly not unusual for cabins to be shared.”
While agencies often supply the manpower, it is contractors like Film-Ocean that tender for work from the big oil and gas operators. Some industry voices tell me that in the race to win contracts, firms can over-promise at the expense of the wellbeing of the crew. I speak to one offshore worker (who asked to remain anonymous) with close to a decade’s experience working for firms, including Film-Ocean. He tells me that a contractor might send a smaller crew to keep the cost down and win the contract, and say, “‘Those guys will just work whenever you need them.’ Instead of saying, ‘These guys have to work 12 hours on then 12 hours off.’” Clarity over the conditions once you are out there is sometimes lacking, too. “Basically, they just stick an ROV on a ship, send it to Qatar, send the guys over and go, ‘Crack on’ … ” he says.
Sometimes, he adds, there might be empty rooms on the rig, but to save money on cleaning they’ll still have four men in a cabin. Since the incident on the Burj, he says, he knows of other people being sent on jobs by Film-Ocean on the understanding that they wouldn’t be sharing cabins, only to discover, on arrival, that they were. Film-Ocean did not provide a response to this claim.
The majority of the workers I speak to insist on anonymity for fear of repercussions. A history of blacklisting has long cast a shadow over the sector; it is understood that workers who cause too many difficulties – or raise concerns about safety or conditions – can be swiftly booted back to land with the letters NRB marked next to their name: “Not Required Back”.
Robson, says Graham, was usually cautious about what he said and to whom he said it – “because of the knock-on effect for the next jobs” – but for an eight-week contract the situation felt unacceptable. He did speak up, first complaining to Begley, who was his supervisor. Begley escalated it to someone higher on the rig and, when he was told nothing could be done, Robson went directly to Film-Ocean, Graham says. She and Robson talked about this over the phone, she says, and a sense of the challenges on the rig can also be gleaned from text messages between the two of them.
In one exchange in late October, Graham asks if he’s still sharing a room, to which Robson replies: “Moving tomorrow”. (Graham told me that she believes at one point Robson thought he might be given a new cabin.)Later, on the morning of 4 November, Robson messages to say that someone else, whom he doesn’t know, had been in the room when he was meant to be asleep. “Can’t see me lasting here if four people are meant to be in this room,” he says. “Not a chance.”
“I’m sorry you’re having a rough ride there,” Graham replies.
“Going to message the beach [industry slang for ‘onshore’] and tell them they need to sort this otherwise am going,” says Robson.
The disruption continued: in late November, Robson described feeling “wrecked” from lack of sleep. “If they had listened to the complaints Robbie had put forward, and the suggestion that the men were split up, this would probably never have happened,” says Graham.
It may be that Forrest, too, was a product of a system that operates under perpetual pressure to keep the taps flowing. Hailing from Maud, a village in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, Forrest climbed the career ladder working for numerous subsea contractors. At the time he was working on the Burj, he was living in Thailand, where he has a wife and children. On his CV, he describes himself as someone who “enjoys being part of … a team”, and who “thrives in highly pressurised and challenging working environments”.
Friends and colleagues also suggested he was a man of good temperament. They were shocked to hear he had been responsible for such an outburst of violence. Forrest, they told me, may have been a physically imposing man, but he was “a gentle giant”. None could fathom how the events that took place on the Burj came about.
But a number of people who knew or worked with Forrest, again speaking under condition of anonymity, suggested that in the runup to the incident on the Burj, he had been working increasingly longer stints offshore with shorter periods back home. This pattern began during the pandemic, when Covid restrictions and quarantine measures meant that workers faced pressure to remain offshore, or spend their rest periods on rigs or vessels. I was told of one diver who spent 10 months offshore during this period.
In Qatar, restrictions were not fully lifted until late 2022, just in time for the football World Cup. When the incident happened, one source told me, Forrest was coming to the end of a five- or six-month period offshore. I was unable to confirm how much time Forrest had spent on land before taking the position on the Seafox Burj, but David (not his real name), a manager for an offshore contractor who lives in Thailand and was friendly with Forrest, believed his workload had escalated that year. A few weeks before the incident on the Burj, David had spoken to a mutual colleague and exchanged messages with Forrest about how things were going. The impression he got was that Forrest “was burned out from being offshore too long. Crew changes were not possible because of Covid. Threats from employers that if you don’t go back, you’ll never get a job again.” Film-Ocean did not provide a response to this claim, and North Oil Company did not respond to any requests for comment.
* * *
It has been more than two years since Robson’s death. As time rolls on, Graham is learning that the oil and gas industry does not lend itself to transparency. A full account of the incident remains obscure. Film-Ocean would not comment when asked if it had conducted a review of its workplace policies, and North Oil Company is yet to release a statement. Perhaps, as the companies involved suggest, this was a tragedy that came out of nowhere – a random outburst of violence. Even so, there are details that deserve scrutiny, questions that could not only help Graham make sense of her loss, but may benefit other workers in the industry. Could Robson’s death have been prevented? Are there lessons to be learned? She may be waiting some time for answers.
Graham remains steadfast. “People have said, ‘Are you going up against an oil company? You’ve got no chance,’” she says. “Well, if somebody doesn’t stand up to them then nobody ever will. No family should ever have to go through this.”
In the meantime, this multibillion-dollar industry ploughs on, a constant stream of workers coming, going – sometimes disappearing altogether. It isn’t stopping now, and it didn’t stop in December 2022, either. Two days after Robson was killed, Graham told me, a different agency was hiring for a replacement.
