Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she is taking to improve safety on offshore oil and gas installations on the UK continental shelf.

HSE has intervention strategies for every duty holder operating on the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS). Strategies are addressed through a risk-based planned inspection programme, set every year for each duty holder, to test their relative strengths and focus on their weaknesses. This is further supported by investigations of incidents, which in addition to enabling HSE to hold duty holders to account for any non-compliances, usually provide opportunities for improvement in relation to the underlying causes of incidents and non-compliance.

The Safety Case regime is also a key mechanism for improvement. Duty holders cannot operate without HSE’s formal acceptance of their Safety Case that sets out how they will manage the major accident risks. Any material changes to the Safety Case also require HSE acceptance. HSE accepts Safety Cases where the duty holder has demonstrated the risks created are controlled to a level that is as low as is reasonably practicable (ALARP). Duty holders must review their safety cases every five years to be able to continue to demonstrate ALARP in the context of the ageing of their installations, and changes in technology and management systems that are relevant for safety.

HSE also has two focussed inspection programmes that provide further improvement opportunities for industry:

In-Depth Inspections focussing on Maintaining Safe Operations. These inspections were introduced in 2016 to address the potential adverse safety implications of the oil price downturn and focus on the effectiveness of duty holder leadership in managing the safety risks.

Operational Integrity inspections. These focus on those elements of Process Safety Management that are most relevant to the prevention of hydrocarbon releases including the need for industry to focus on effective safety management systems as well as hardware issues such as plant integrity.

Both inspection programmes have identified lessons for individual Duty holders and the industry. These are being addressed directly with each duty holder inspected, and key issues fed back to industry.