PIPER Alpha survivor Ed Punchard's grip was loosening on the rope which was his only lifeline after he was blown off a standby boat near the stricken oil platform into the North Sea.

As waves crashed over his head, forcing him under the freezing sea, Punchard's thoughts drifted to his one-year-old daughter, Suzie. It was the memory of her that made him realise he had to live.

Each time he thought of Suzie, the experienced diver's hands miraculously stopped slipping down the rope into the waters where, exhausted, he would almost certainly have drowned.

Twenty years after the horror of Piper Alpha, Suzie is a permanent reminder of why Punchard was one of only 61 men to survive the disaster on July 6, 1988, which claimed 167 lives.

Punchard subsequently moved to Australia where he is now a successful TV documentary maker.

In 1998, to mark the 10th anniversary, Punchard returned to lay a wreath at the location where Piper Alpha once stood. Today he will attend the memorial service in Aberdeen.

His award-winning documentary, Paying For The Piper, explored many of the issues surrounding the disaster.

He had been on the platform - one of the most productive in the North Sea - for 10 weeks, training divers. The blaze was caused by a gas leak which ignited and destroyed pipelines carrying gas and oil from the oil fields. It took an hour for the lines to be shut down, by which time a series of fireball explosions had ripped through the platform.

The 51-year-old, who last week launched 167 oil industry scholarships for young people at the House of Commons as a way of marking the anniversary, said: "When the fireball came over the standby vessel, the Silver Pit, I went over the side and clung on to a rope.

"I was bobbing along and used my experience as a diver not to panic by trying to control my breathing as the waves washed over me.

"The rope was quite slippery and I could feel it slithering through my hands. I didn't want to come to the end of the rope because I was so exhausted that I wouldn't have been able to stay alive.

"As the rope slithered through my hands my mind drifted to Suzie. Whenever I thought of her, the rope stopped slithering. I wasn't in control of stopping myself from slipping down the rope and I can only describe it as an incredible experience.

"What happened left me with a responsibility to live life to the full, but people have asked me how I cope with what I experienced. A great deal of the horrors of that night have stuck with me, but time does heal. The 20th anniversary will be a very intense experience for everyone."

Ironically, Punchard read Nicholas Monsarrat's The Cruel Sea before the first explosion on Piper Alpha. He worked from offices situated directly underneath the gas compression module, where the first explosion took place.

He witnessed the intense fire, pictures of which symbolised the disaster, at the oil-well head as he was sent to a muster station to find out what had happened. He then went aboard the Silver Pit, as it left the platform, before he was blown off the deck.

He joined a 25-strong dive team that "got stuck in" trying to save the oil workers many of whom were hideously burned and would later die from their injuries. He added: "I was taken by a passage in The Cruel Sea where someone is talking about how he might die in the sea. He said you can die well or die badly.

"People don't realise there was a great deal of humour in among all the horror of what happened. It was part of the great sense of spirit, collaboration and decency.

"The dive team were fortunate to be close to the Silver Pit and got off in one piece. We kept each other's spirits up.

"People were diving into the sea trying to get people out alive. Amid the horror, it was wonderful to see a human capacity to react under stress."

He recalled how one survivor named Roy talked lucidly to him after being hauled on to the boat despite the top of his head having been lost in the explosion.

Punchard said: "I asked how he was and if I could get him anything. He said, don't worry about me, look after the others'.

"Looking at the expression on his face, hearing him speak and looking at his injuries, it was absolutely remarkable he could say that. It taught me not to underestimate the human spirit, but I also have other memories of people with terrible injuries."

Punchard also explained how the immediate aftermath left him hyper-sensitive, and as the helicopter carrying the survivors from boat reached the northeast coast he could "literally smell the land". He added: "It was bizarre. I had an incredibly heightened sense of smell."

One of his hardest moments was dealing with an inquiry from a man in Aberdeen Royal Infirmary who wanted to know if his brother was alive. He added: "I'll never forget the look on his face. It was one of worry and hope. He asked if I knew his brother, and I told him that I didn't. He was desperately looking for news that he was OK, but I honestly didn't know and couldn't answer him. I feel certain that he lost his brother."

Punchard devoted much of his efforts towards campaigning for improving safety in the oil industry and visited the platform's owners, Occidental, in the US for his documentary.

He said: "I had done a lot of thinking during my time in the North Sea about safety issues and was better equipped than some of the other survivors to campaign. I could express my fears, anger and frustration about what was wrong with the off-shore regimes.

"I've felt that I have made the most of my life when other people were not so fortunate. Although it will be a memorial service, I am looking forward to seeing some old friends."

The service of remembrance for Piper Alpha victims will take place at 2pm in the Kirk of St Nicholas Uniting in Union Street, Aberdeen. The victims will also be remembered at 4pm at the Piper Alpha memorial in the city's Hazelhead Park. A service will take place aboard the Piper Bravo oil platform and a wreath will be placed in the North Sea, in the direction of where the platform stood. For more details visit www.oilchaplaincy.com