Media Centre

Wednesday 25 January 2012

Oil & Gas UK Welcomes Calls to Protect Offshore Safety from EU Regulation

Speaking after Sir Robert Smith MP called on the Prime Minister to ensure that the UK’s world leading health and safety regime is not compromised by a proposed EU Regulation, Oil & Gas UK chief executive Malcolm Webb said: “Oil & Gas UK is very concerned that the European Commission’s draft Regulation would have a detrimental impact on UK offshore safety.

“Aside from the confusion and added complexity this new EU Regulation would create, there is a significant health and safety risk in moving regulatory control away from the UK and over to the EU, where the same level of specialist competence does not exist. An EU Regulation will require the dismantling of all the UK offshore safety regulation put in place over the last 25 years, only to be replaced with new ambiguous and unclear EU wording – and all to no gain.

“Accordingly, we believe an EU Directive and not an EU Regulation is the right mechanism to be used here. A Directive would leave all the existing UK Regulation in place but require those EU member states which do not currently achieve the recognised high standards present in the North Sea, to bring their regimes up to that ‘gold standard’ level.”

Ends

For more information, please contact Chris Walker on 01224 577250.

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