On Monday 20th August 2012 two workers died as a result of an accident on the Stena Clyde, a mobile offshore drilling platform located off the Victorian coast approximately 90 km from Warrnambool....

OHS Legislation Scenario in Australian Offshore Petroleum Industry
Introduction:
In light of the Stena Clyde incident that took place on 20th Aug’12, the talk around loose regulatory
framework and poor implementation when it comes to worker and operating safety in offshore
environment has revived. This is not good news in the senses that Australian industries and specifically
Petroleum industry is regarded as top class and it is not ideal and would be a good thing to see such
lapses in the safety norms implementation and this could lead to serious
and damage and its saying at
global levels. In light of this constantly re-emerging talk and controversy, we in this report would be
taking a holistic approach towards it.
We would be reviewing as to what is the present state of legislative and regulatory framework in
application for offshore industries in Australia. We would be comparing he same with the onshore
egulations and safety norms and see the comparison between the two., Moving ahead we would be
finding out the possible issues that exist compared to internal needs and international benchmarking. In
the concluding section we would be recommendation the immediate as well as future steps that needs
to be taken in order to ensure meeting of needs and benchmarking.
Present OHS environment in offshore Industry:
Oil and Gas exploration is not only complex in operation but indeed a very hazardous industry as well.
This calls for a robust regulatory regime to be in place which ensures safety to minimize the risk of major
accidents. This is something that is being continuously assured by regulators and time and again we
have seen how much improvement still needs to be in place to ensure an acceptable level. It can be said
to be innovative, low responsibility and good idea to allow safety standards in such situations to be
maintained and ensured by operator. It is full of obvious flaws because in doing so we forget one
underline aspect that for operators it’s all about underlying margin and hence very incentive for him to
forgo a safety standard which according to him is waste.
This is indeed the real issues with present Australian offshore drilling regulatory standard. This is so
ecause duty of care and safety has in waters have been onus of operators and sufficient flexibility has
een assigned to them to ensure management of hazards and minimization of risks. What need to be
understood for future perspective that regulatory competence, clarity and scope covering are some
aspects that should cover all relevant aspect related to offshore operations? This should be something
that should be fundamental requirement of any regime of regulation that is proposed and comes in
(Writer, 2012). It needs to be understood that no one authority in such complex operations would be
competent enough to ensure safety and care and hence the best and long lasting option would be that
of good c0-regulation practice.
It is other thing that present Australian offshore industry has decent reputation in terms of safety at
least from incidents perspective. However such reputation is basis the local incidents reported and
expectations. However when the same is compared to international standards it is evident that majority
of such operators lack mature safety culture and hence do not operate at best practice safety levels. The
situation is not easy to be resolved due to lack of regulatory resources and hence it calls for them being
allocated to operators who are at more risk operators.
Things are real messy when looked at deeply and compared to benchmarking economies. This is
ecause of regulatory regime being jurisdictional, legal, process and regulatory interfaces and it is on
top of all these that relationships between multiple regulators are placed. This is very risky scenario to
e in because in such state forget the improvement, it would even not allow finding out shortcomings of
operators and hence increasing the risk of a major accident. It has been officially reported and
confirmed by government authority’s couple of years back that there lies potential gap in both OHS as
well as regulatory coverage coupled with less than optimal interface issues.
It is in light of this fact that it has been strongly recommended to have legislative amendment in place so
that co-operation between two agencies of AMSA and...