Shipping losses continued their downward trend with 94 losses reported worldwide in 2013, coming in below 100 for only the second time in 12 years, according to Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty SE’s (AGCS) second annual Safety and Shipping Review 2014, which analyzes reported shipping losses of over 100 gross tons.
2013 marks the 25th anniversary of one of Britain’s most tragic oil and gas incidents. The explosion that destroyed the Piper Alpha production platform in the North Sea in July 1988, killed 167 men and changed the way that the UK approached industry safety altogether. The anniversary of this sobering event is causing the British oil and gas industry to evaluate the progress it has made in safety and risk over the past quarter-century, and the participants in a GL Noble Denton’s roundtable discussion that took place during last March 2013 offered strong views on how far the sector has come.
Risk is the product of frequency and consequence. Accordingly, high consequence events which occur infrequently may contribute as much risk as frequent events which have smaller consequences. Estimating the frequency with which events occur is as important to overall risk as accurately predicting the consequences. One way of estimating frequency is to look at historical records. The information presented below are an abstract from the “Safety of offshore oil & gas Impact Assessment Annex I” working paper from the European Commission, published in 2011 to accompany the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament on safety of offshore oil and gas prospection, exploration and production activities.
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Officer of the Watch 