Oil firms use pledge as "fig leaf"

News | HSP
08.11.2007

Head of the executive's offshore safety division Ian Whewell said that some members of the offshore industry's Step Change in Safety programme were using it as "a fig leaf to protect their reputations, without showing commitment at the highest level. We have evidence that some companies are using Step Change as evidence that they are doing something about safety ... Initiatives were coming out and they weren't doing anything to implement them."

The Step Change initiative has been running since 1997 and involves most major offshore operators. Its current aim is to try to ensure "the UK is the safest place to work in the worldwide oil and gas industry by 2010"  (see Improving your safety record). Though the number of fatal and major injuries among offshore workers remained on a downward trend last year, the rate of over-three-day injuries rose around 7% in the past year according to provisional figures released by the HSE.

Whewell voiced his criticisms to a recent board meeting of the trade body Oil and Gas UK, suggesting that Step Change should begin gathering comparable accident data from its members. "I said they should start collecting information to identify who the poor performers were," he told HSW, "so they could take action and get them to improve." He said he had also suggested the scheme published the accident statistics for individual members. He said there had been a favourable reception for the idea of measuring operators' comparative performance, but beleived the industry would be "reserved about going the whole hog" and making the data public.