For those unfamiliar with EU-speak, the quite positive response from Oil and Gas UK to the news of political agreement on offshore safety legislation might have seemed a little surprising.
After all, the industry body had previously been warning of dire consequences if the EU became over-involved in the issue and indeed claimed that there could have been negative impacts on North Sea safety as a result.
The key to the apparent change in tack lies in the crucial difference between a Regulation and a Directive. Now that the EU Commissioner for Energy, Gunther Oettinger, has settled for the latter, the areas of controversy have been largely resolved.
Indeed, the objectives set out in the new agreement are little more than a sensible list of what any responsible government should be doing to safeguard both lives and the environment. The important questions are not about objectives but the means of delivery.
With a Regulation, every country within the EU has to accept the same definition of how it is to be implemented without the freedom to interpret the ruling in different ways. A Directive on the other hand sets out the goals to be addressed but leaves it to individual governments to decide how to reach them.
It was the prospect of a Regulation, which would have superseded existing UK legislation, that alarmed our own industry for the straightforward reason that we have a far more advanced and sophisticated health and safety regime in the North Sea than anything the EU was likely to come up with.
This is, of course, the product of long and sometimes tragic experience. But the danger was that in the search for common denominators across the EU, bureaucracy might have replaced common sense while key safeguards could have been diluted or confused.
As matters now stand, the Directive which has been put forward by the Commission and approved by the Council of Energy Ministers is difficult to take exception to. It is written in pretty general terms and with more than one eye on what is currently developing in Southern Europe rather than seeking to second-guess what already exists in the North Sea.
For example, the Directive wants to see “public participation prior to the start of drilling in previously undrilled areas”. The upsurge of interest in Italian waters, particularly in the Adriatic and Straits of Sicily, spring to mind, as does the Spanish Government’s controversial decision to issue exploration licences around the Canary Isles, in opposition to local political opinion.
The case put forward by the UK has been that the rest of Europe should aspire to standards which prevail in the North Sea rather than a pan-European framework being imposed upon the existing industry. That is not an arrogant position but entirely reasonable, given all we have been through to get to the regime that now prevails. This has been pointed out before by Energy.
Importantly, offshore inspectors of EU member states will work together to ensure effective sharing of best practices. This gives our own regulatory bodies an extremely important role in helping to shape safety policies for countries which have much more recent or embryonic offshore industries to regulate.
So at a time when Euro-scepticism is in the air, it is good to see sweet reason breaking out in this field at least. Given the international nature of the oil and gas industry, it makes complete sense for best practice to be shared and EU-wide standards to be set, not least because our own people will undoubtedly be working in every new province that emerges.
The agreement on which the Directive will be based takes that principle one step further: “The EU Commission will work with its international partners to promote the implementation of the highest safety standards across the world. Operators working in the EU will be expected to demonstrate they apply the same accident prevention policies overseas as they apply in their EU operations”. An excellent aspiration, if it can be made to stick.
Meanwhile, there is an imminent corrective to any sense of complacency within our own industry – as well as a reminder of why the UK’s own safety regime had to change so dramatically for the better. This summer sees the 25th anniversary of the Piper Alpha disaster and the loss of 167 lives.
To mark this grim anniversary, Oil and Gas UK is organising a three-day conference in Aberdeen under the chairmanship of Lord Cullen. People from across the globe who are involved in offshore safety issues will come together in order to discuss the lessons that have been learned and acted upon – as well as what still requires to done.
It will be surprising if one of the themes to emerge is not the very different levels of safety regimes that apply in different parts of the world, even though the same companies which accept the standards of the North Sea are involved in these places.
Every company should have a legal and moral obligation to operate to the same standards of health, safety and environmental protection in every part of the world rather than to what they can get away with in places which do not have the ability to properly regulate them.
If the EU Directive or the Aberdeen conference can help to advance that principle, then useful purposes will be served.
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