Britain’s oil industry needs to implement better safety strategies, regulators warn
The British oil, gas, and red diesel uk industries were strongly criticised for its safety standards after it was emerged that there had been an increase in the number of leaks from oil rigs in British water. It was also found that there had been a rise in the number of injuries taking place, as data from the Health and Safety Executive was released.
The latest figures show that there had been 85 major accidental leaks in the last year, which compares to 61 in the previous year. The higher the number of oil leaks, the greater the chance of an oil spill erupting similar to that of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico in April this year. While there were no deaths last year on Britain’s oil rigs, there were 50 major injuries, which is a significant increase from 30 in the previous year. However, these figures exclude an incident which occurred on a helicopter travelling from a gas facility over to Aberdeen, in which 16 people died when the helicopter crashed during the journey.
Steve Walker, the head of the regulator’s offshore unit, said that there were many improvements to be made in order to make Britain’s oil and gas industry safer for workers. In particularly he regarded the increase in the level of hydrocarbon releases as a major problem, citing concerns that the offshore industry was not taking enough steps to reduce the potential for major accidents. Oil and Gas U.K. director for health, safety and employment, Robert Paterson, said that the industry would reflect on this data and would move forward to identify what it can improve for the future.
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