'Industry must do more to meet offshore safety targets', says HSE

E089:06 1 September 2006

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has published safety statistics for the offshore industry during 2005/06. The figures show that two workers were killed and 50 suffered major injuries. This compares to no fatalities and 48 major injuries in 2004/05. The offshore statistics bulletin is available at: www.hse.gov.uk/offshore/statistics/stat0506.htm

The combined fatal and major injury rate decreased by 11 per cent to 225.4 per 100,000 workers compared with 253.4 in 2004/05. This improvement is explained by the 21 per cent rise in the number of people working offshore.

Commenting on the statistics, Ian Whewell, Head of HSE's Offshore Division said: "The figures show continued improvements in the incident rates for the more serious incidents and I welcome this. However, whilst rates are important, the cold fact is that two men died last year and a further 50 people were seriously injured. The industry must now push on with its programmes of improvement if it is to deliver its agreed objectives of being the safest sector in the world by 2010 and to bring about more pronounced incident rate reductions.

"The offshore industry faces considerable challenges as the North Sea infrastructure ages. Many offshore installations have exceeded their expected working lives and requirements for maintenance, repair and replacement are now increasing rapidly. HSE believes that the goals of significantly improving installation integrity and securing a long safe future for the UK Continental Shelf are inseparable and that investment in infrastructure is crucial to securing a safe and sustainable offshore environment."

Ian Whewell added: "Senior management commitment across the industry is high and the partnership infrastructure is in place and working to bring improvements, but there is still more to be done. On our part, we will continue to focus on the fundamental safety issues for the offshore industry, which are plant integrity, safe systems of work, supervision and risk assessment. In particular, we have been able to feed back good practice and lessons learned to industry, and I am pleased to see that the statistics show that dangerous occurrences, many of which are precursors to major incidents, have decreased."

Alan Brown of ExxonMobil, Co-Chair of Step Change in Safety, said: " Although we see improvements in offshore safety, the latest statistics show that we still have much to do if we are to achieve our Step Change vision of making the UK the safest oil and gas region in the world by 2010. We want to ensure that everyone returns home safely, and nobody gets hurt.

"There is currently a high level of energy across industry from drill floor to boardroom focussed on achieving our Step Change vision. Over the next two months, more that 70 companies will be involved in leadership visits to our UK onshore and offshore installations to discuss safety with all members of our workforce, and specifically, to capture improvement ideas and address safety concerns. Working together we are convinced we can make a step change improvement and achieve our 2010 vision."

Doug Halkett of Transocean, the other Co-Chair of Step Change in Safety added: "We are creating a more dynamic safety culture where the sharing of information and best practice is becoming the standard way we do business. Safety is our number one priority; we are challenging how we have worked in the past and encouraging greater debate about what we need to change to improve our safety performance in the future. Step Change believes that our industry can achieve the 2010 vision if everyone is involved and committed to world class safety across the UK sector."

Notes to editors

1. The Offshore Safety Statistics Bulletin sets out the headline health and safety statistics for the offshore oil and gas industries and provides an important indicator of health and safety performance in the sector. It is prepared specifically for the offshore workforce and their safety representatives and is available to all via the HSE website.
2. The Bulletin is designed to show provisional headline figures before a more detailed statistical analysis is published later in the year. It records fatalities, reportable injuries, occurrences of ill health and dangerous occurrences reported to HSE between 1 April 2005 and 31 March 2006 under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995 (RIDDOR).
3. Vantage is a registration and tracking system for offshore workers in the UK. Since its introduction in November 2003 it has been increasingly widely adopted by the offshore oil and gas industry. Vantage provides the most reliable basis for estimating the offshore population.
4. Step Change in Safety (www.stepchangeinsafety.net) is a key industry initiative launched in September 1997 to improve health and safety performance, awareness and behaviours throughout the UK oil and gas industry. It is supported by all the sector's major trade associations, the trade unions, HSE and Cogent (the industry's Sector Skills Council).

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