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UK News - Breaking news in the field of health and safety
Offshore fatal and major injury rates continue to decline
Statistics published by the HSE depict an offshore oil and gas industry where the number of fatal and major injuries have remained fairly constant at around 50 over the last 6 years, but set against a 21% increase in the workforce this represents a combined fatal and major injury rate decrease of 11% to 225.4 per 100,000 workers compared with 253.4 in 2004/05.
The latest offshore statistics bulletin containing provisional figures for 2005/2006 also shows:
an over-3-day injury rate decreasing slightly as it has done since 2002/03;
a decrease of 10.9% in dangerous occurrences, at 491 this is 60 less than in 2004/2005.
All involved are working to achieve the targets set in the sector's Step Change in Safety industry initiative launched in September 1997 to improve health and safety performance, awareness and behaviours throughout the UK oil and gas industry.
The provisional figures are provided through the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995 (RIDDOR), the Vantage registration and tracking system for offshore workers in the UK is used to provide a basis for estimating the offshore working population.
Comment:
“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 2 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.
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." - Head of HSE’s Offshore Division.
“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." - Co-Chair of Step Change in Safety.
"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." - Co-Chair of Step Change in Safety.
04.09.06
