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EU action must enhance our existing safety standards, not hinder them, says Malcolm Webb
You report that European plans to prevent a spill in EU waters like that of BP's Gulf of Mexico disaster "are under attack from the UK and other national governments" (EU plans to prevent oil spills are under attack, 20 April). The article wrongly implies that the rules governing drilling in the UK are lacking.
Having worked in the British oil and gas industry for almost four decades and witnessed the top priority it now gives to workforce safety and environmental protection, I must set the record straight. You quote Richard George of Greenpeace as saying, "If these regulations pass they'll be a good first step towards ensuring that oil companies are held responsible for their spills", but you fail to consider the situation in the UK.
Companies operating here are responsible for environmental or other damage resulting from their operational failures and must demonstrate their financial responsibility to the Department of Energy and Climate Change in order to obtain a licence to drill. There is no cap on the company's responsibility for clean-up and compensation.
George's statement that "David Cameron needs to get behind efforts to prevent a Deepwater Horizon-style disaster in European waters" fails to recognise that the UK government has already carried out a review of the regulations governing drilling and was satisfied that they were stringent and fit-for-purpose.
The safety regime here is very different from that in the US and is considered a gold standard worldwide. It is based on the recommendations of the Cullen report which was produced following our own disaster, the 1988 explosion of Piper Alpha, in which 167 people lost their lives. Today the onus is firmly on the industry to continually demonstrate to the Health and Safety Executive that the risk of oil and gas releases is as low as reasonably practicable in each well they drill. Consequently, we have not had a blowout in over 20 years.
Under the European commission's plans, you say, "companies would have to record any incidents, however minor" and that at present "companies can conceal such incidents". The latter is far from the reality in the UK, where weekly drilling reports must be sent to the regulator, where all dangerous occurrences must be reported to the HSE, and where companies actively share and analyse the cause of high potential events.
The UK oil and gas industry is not against change. Indeed, since the Gulf of Mexico incident, the industry, regulators and trade unions have worked together to identify potential safety improvements and to swiftly implement them. In contrast to your claim that the commission "has been rebuffed by companies", these meetings are attended by a commission representative. Significant strides have already been taken by this group, as demonstrated in its recently published interim report.
However, we believe that some aspects of the commission's proposals risk having a detrimental effect on Britain's high safety standards and we have not shied away from communicating this. We support the commission's goal of ensuring the highest safety standards. But we think any EU action must take into account the existing national and international network of regulation and act only to enhance this system rather than damage it.