Offshore Oil and Gas | A Year on from the HSE's 'Major Accident Warning'

When the Health and Safety Executive issued its major accident warning to offshore oil and gas firms in July 2024, it marked a watershed moment for our industry. The warning, triggered by failings at Apache North Sea Limited's platform, highlighted a critical vulnerability that had been quietly building across the sector: the underestimation of human factors in preventing catastrophic incidents.

Why Did the HSE Issue an Accident Warning?

For those who are not aware, the HSE's warning specifically addressed how human error during safety-critical tasks, activities where mistakes could directly cause major accidents, remains insufficiently managed across the sector.

Offshore oil and gas platforms are among the world's most hazardous workplaces. Workers operate complex machinery in harsh marine environments, handling volatile substances where a single error can trigger fires, explosions, or environmental disasters.

The Apache case revealed that human and organisational factors hadn't been properly considered in either the design of critical systems or the supporting procedures and competency frameworks. This wasn't just about individual mistakes; it was about systemic failures to account for how real people, under real pressure, interact with dangerous equipment

Reflection On the Past Year

Twelve months on, the offshore industry presents a paradox. According to Offshore Energies UK's latest data, we're operating in the safest period since records began, yet dangerous occurrences remain stubbornly present.

In 2022 alone, we recorded 77 dangerous occurrences, with hydrocarbon releases accounting for 52 incidents, numbers that industry leaders themselves describe as "unacceptably high."

What's particularly concerning is the gradual upward trend in personal safety incidents. Despite technological advances and enhanced safety protocols, we're seeing more injuries from basic hazards: slips, trips, falls, and manual handling incidents. These aren't niche risks; they're the fundamentals of workplace safety that we should have mastered decades ago.

How Human Factors Impact the Oil and Gas Industry

For health and safety professionals in the oil and gas industry, the HSE's warning signals a fundamental shift in how we must approach offshore safety. Safety Critical Task Analysis (SCTA), while established as a methodology, has been implemented with what the HSE diplomatically calls "varying degrees of success."

The reality is starker: many organisations have launched SCTA programmes that lack sustained commitment, suffer from quality inconsistencies, and fail to properly integrate human factors into risk assessment.

This creates both a challenge and an opportunity for safety professionals. This means we must evolve from being compliance officers to becoming human performance specialists. This means understanding not just what procedures say, but how workers actually perform tasks under stress, fatigue, and time pressure. It requires us to champion design changes that make human error less likely, rather than simply training people to avoid mistakes.

Wider Implications

The maintenance backlog issue, exacerbated by COVID-19 but persisting years later, reveals deeper structural challenges. HSE inspections in 2022 identified 1,083 non-compliance issues, up from 757 in 2021, with maintenance featuring prominently. This comes as a result of economic pressures, workforce challenges, and ageing infrastructure, which create compounding risks.

For organisations like us, that provide safety training and consultancy across high-hazard industries, these trends underscore the need for comprehensive, practical approaches to human factors integration, which we have woven into our course narratives.

Mental Health | An Emerging Safety Concern

Perhaps the most significant evolution in offshore safety thinking is the recognition of mental health as a critical factor. The industry is beginning to acknowledge that worker wellbeing extends beyond physical safety to psychological health. 

Stress, isolation, and the unique pressures of offshore work all impact decision-making and error rates. Forward-thinking safety professionals are now incorporating mental health support into their safety management systems, recognising that a psychologically healthy workforce is a safer workforce.

Actions for All Safety Professionals

First, we must conduct honest assessments of our SCTA programmes, addressing quality gaps and ensuring sustained implementation. Second, we need to integrate human factors expertise into design and operational decisions, not as an afterthought but as a fundamental consideration. Third, we must champion proactive maintenance strategies that prevent backlogs from creating cascading risks.

Most importantly, we must shift from reactive to predictive approaches. The HSE has made clear it will inspect higher-hazard installations and poor performers more frequently and thoroughly. Rather than waiting for regulatory action, safety professionals should be leading the charge in identifying and addressing human factors vulnerabilities before they manifest as incidents.

The year since the HSE's warning has shown that achieving true safety excellence requires more than technical solutions; it demands a fundamental understanding of human performance in complex, high-risk environments. For safety professionals willing to embrace this challenge, it represents an opportunity to genuinely save lives and prevent disasters, making offshore work safer for the thousands who brave the North Sea every day.

Sharpen your understanding of process safety and human factors with the NEBOSH Certificate in Process Safety Management. It’s designed specifically for professionals in process industries like oil and gas, giving learners a qualification that builds the skills to make safer, smarter decisions in high-hazard industries.