Offshore Industry: Continental Shelf

(asked on 16th December 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 29 November 2021 to Question 80980 on Offshore Industry: Continental Shelf, if she will provide the duty holders that worked with HSE on alternative ways of carrying out safety critical maintenance work; and what the outcomes were of that work.


Answered by
Chloe Smith Portrait
Chloe Smith
This question was answered on 12th January 2022

Although many duty holders undertook extended maintenance shutdowns in 2021, these were often not enough to eliminate the backlog issues. As well as through its day-to-day regulatory activities, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) also impacts on offshore safety through membership of working groups. One of these is the Asset Integrity Task Group (AITG). AITG members include Apache, BP, CNOOC, CNR, Repsol Sinopec, TAQA as well as the Oil and Gas Authority and Oil and Gas UK. The AITG’s current key focus relates to addressing asset integrity issues, including maintenance backlog, through a more effective focus on Process Safety Leadership. The offshore industry signed up to improving its approach to Process Safety Leadership at the Oil and Gas UK’s Health & Safety Conference in 2019.

Outcomes of HSE’s working on alternative means than traditional shutdowns to address maintenance backlogs, include the recognition by industry that a move towards more sustained asset integrity campaigns for late life installations is required. Potential solutions include increasing the size of the offshore workforce using flotels or jack-up drilling rigs in accommodation mode alongside production installations and more frequent maintenance campaigns; more extended shutdowns and Floating Production Storage and Offloading vessel (FPSOs) being taken off station for extensive maintenance that cannot be done offshore.

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