Wireline Issue 42 - Summer 2018

Emerging from one of its toughest downturns, the UK’s offshore oil and gas industry is navigating profound issues around its role in a fast-changing world. Deirdre Michie, chief executive of Oil & Gas UK, outlines the association’s focus as the sector moves through Brexit and the transition to a low carbon economy amid the relentless pursuit of safe operations.

a process or reading a report, but relating to and learning from past tragedies is vital. A growing proportion of our workforce have joined the industry since Piper Alpha, and our conference also considered how we should engage this generation, and the next, in a way that really helps us to keep positively progressing our focus on safe operations, as the culture of the industry develops and as new technology continues to change the way we do things.

was that there can never be any let up in our pursuit of safe operations.

Q: We’re speaking to you shortly after the Safety 30 Conference, which gave special focus to the learnings taken from the Piper Alpha tragedy. Three decades on, how has industry changed? A: The terrible events that took place that night left an indelible mark on our industry and on the people left behind. We might be a big industry, but we’re a small community.

Lord Cullen – who chaired the public inquiry into Piper Alpha, which led to the root and branch health and safety reform of our industry – spoke in a very insightful and compelling way on what can be learnt from the fundamental reasons for past major accidents, whatever the differences in conditions today or in the future.

One of the strongest messages that came across loud and clear at Safety 30, ss Outlook 2018 Figures

It can be easy to almost desensitise yourself to risk when pouring over

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| W I R E L I N E | SUMMER 2018