The offshore oil and gas industry in the UK has developed rapidly over the last 30 years or so. Significant technical advances have been made in moving from the development of the southern North Sea gas fields to the large platforms in the central and northern North Sea and, more recently, frontier area developments to the west of Shetland based on floating production technology. Major accidents have occurred in the UK and elsewhere from which important lessons have been learned. The most significant of these was the PIPER A disaster in the UK in July 1988. The public inquiry which followed, and the report by Lord Cullen, have led to fundamental changes in the way in which offshore safety is managed by the industry and regulated. There has been a move away from prescriptive regulations to those which set safety goals, allied to greater emphasis on the explicit assessment of risks and their management, to be documented in a Safety Case to be prepared by the owner or operator for each installation.
