A joint industry project (JIP) was undertaken to study the use of water deluge to reduce the hazards of fires on offshore installations. The project involved an extensive programme of large-scale experiments studying the effectiveness of area and dedicated deluge in mitigating jet and pool fires, and was sponsored by 11 oil and gas companies and the UK Health and Safety Executive. The work was conducted at the Advantica (formerly British Gas Research and Technology) Spadeadam Test Site, Cumbria, UK. This paper concentrates on a small part of the work performed during the second phase of the project that involved evaluating the effectiveness of area water deluge and dedicated (object specific), water deluge in reducing the heat loading to an object impacted by a crude oil/gas ('live' crude) jet fire. The results demonstrate that a combination of area and dedicated deluge can significantly reduce the heat loading on a critical item of plant such that its temperature is maintained below that at which catastrophic failure might occur, or such that the rate of temperature rise is reduced to a level that provides time for emergency shut down and blow-down to take place. In both cases, escalation is inhibited. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.