18 October, 2010
The ICEM and the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) jointly stated on 15 October that they reject the recommendation by the European Commission (EC) to establish a central set of pan-European safety standards for the offshore oil and gas industries.
The two Global Union Federations (GUFs) were responding to EC Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger’s rolled back recommendation for a “centralised and prescriptive” set of safety standards on 13 October. The recommendation follows the European Parliament’s rejection of a moratorium on deepwater drilling on 7 October by a 323-285 vote.
The moratorium proposal was in response to BP’s Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico. Both the ICEM and ITF, as well as the industry group Oil and Gas UK, believe that a uniform safety regime imposed by the EC would infringe on union-management best practices already in place in the North Sea.
Lars Mhyre and Norrie McVicar
Responding to the recommendation that member states should consider suspending offshore licensing in advance of possible new EU-wide safety standards, Norrie McVicar, Chair of the ITF’s Offshore Task Force Group (OTFG), said: “This is the wrong position to take and the wrong time to take it. The EC should be protecting the safety gains made in the UK offshore sector, not eroding them by dumbing them down to a lowest common denominator.”
Said Lars Myhre, ICEM Energy Sector Chair, “You can never be too safe and we would never condone complacency, but the British and Norwegian sectors are generally good examples of best practice. They should be studied, learned from and, where necessary, improved. They shouldn’t be remodeled into a one size fits all – but not very well – Euro model.”
McVicar added: “One very positive feature of the UK industry is OSPRA, the Oil Spill Prevention and Response Advisory Group, which brings together regulators, industry bodies and trade unions such as Unite and the RMT in a joint effort to ensure that we get the oil and gas we need as safely and cleanly as possible. It’s that kind of good practice that we’d like to see adopted by the rest of the global oil and gas sector, not weakened here in Europe.”