The head of Norway’s offshore safety watchdog said it was her organisation’s job to fret over the future of the oil industry.
“We’re worried. It’s our job to be worried,” Anne Myhrvold, director general of the Petroleum Safety Authority, said at ONS in Stavanger this week.
“It’s our job to challenge you, the industry, when we fear that safety in the industry is going into reverse. Put bluntly, our role is to be the regulator, to ask questions. And that’s what we’re doing here today by asking whether safety is at risk.”
Ms Myhrvold said taking care of expertise and knowledge was the key to safeguarding the industry in decades to come.
She emphasised that enhancing awareness of the question “is safety at risk” was important in itself, and that safety was not just about figures, trends and analyses.
“Behind these numbers stand people – colleagues we’re all working together to protect, just as much in periods with demanding changes and financial pressures as in the good times,” she said.
Greater efficiency could enhance safety, she said, while emphasising that the industry must always have its eye on the future.
She said: “That can be done by looking back and learning – by analysing the RNNP (trend report) results, for example. We know that several companies make a big effort here: understanding the data and implementing improvement measures.
“At the same time, it’s important to learn from what goes well and to identify why it does so. I would urge everyone to roll up their sleeves and to identify and implement measures which reduce risk.”
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