HSE, MCA and the regulatory gap!

For the most part, when there is high activity around an oil and gas operation there is regulatory cover with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) having jurisdiction. The Offshore Installations, “Safety Case Regulations” provides the means by which the HSE have oversight and this extends around an installation out to an area referred to as the 500-metre zone. So, whether it is a barge, a ship, a diving vessel or whatever, if it is within the 500-metre zone of an “installation” the HSE will have oversight.

However, when that ‘installation’ is no longer tied to the seabed it ceases to be an ‘installation’ and moreover when it is moving it becomes a vessel. The same applies when any barge or vessel is no longer within the 500-metre zone, they are no longer covered by the HSE. No problem you might think, the Maritime and Coast Guard Agency (MCA) and the Marine Accident

Investigation Branch (MAIB) will pick it up right? Wrong! If the moving installation or vessel is out with the UK territorial waters (12-mile limit) then it is in international waters and is covered by the Flag State of the vessel!

This scenario has been around forever, but it took a recent fatality to put it firmly in the spotlight. The drilling rig, Valaris 121, was being towed from an oil and gas site to a port on the east coast of Scotland when 50-year-old Jason Thomas from Wales went missing while the rig was around 100 miles south-east of Aberdeen. The circumstances surrounding his disappearance were out with the jurisdiction of the UK Regulatory authorities HSE and MCA, and both confirmed that the Flag State of the vessel would be the authority charged with looking at the event, in this case Liberia. However, after RMT had gone public about the regulatory ‘gap’ and after Tayside Police had visited the rig when it tied up in the port of Dundee, the HSE declared they would be sending a team to look at the loss of the worker. RMT was told this was down to the fact the Police had asked the HSE to consider the ‘circumstances’ around the event. We await the outcome of HSE enquiries in the hope they can at least provide some answers to the family.

This event confirmed the concerns which RMT has been raising for some considerable time with the MCA, HSE, BEIS, DWP, HMRC, and anyone else who would listen! The vast majority of the work around the renewables sector will be undertaken by vessels and all of that work outwith territorial waters is effectively unregulated by the UK authorities. A major event causing serious injury or even death will fall to the Flag State of the vessel concerned. There is no Safety Case Regulations for Wind Turbines and the only jurisdiction for HSE is work on the actual Turbine structure. Hundreds if not thousands of workers are in a regulatory gap that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency by the UK Government!