The Statoil savings in helicopter expenses can be at the expense of safety, trade union fears.
In the wake of the helicopter accident near Bergen, Leif Sande of Industri Energi says to Dagens Næringsliv that the demands for streamlining of services and cost-reducing measures, raises safety concerns . He believes Statoil has pushed the suppliers of helicopter services to accept too many cost-reducing measures in too short a time and asks Statoil chief Eldar Sætre to cancel the last “batch” of those.
– Statoil must let people get the time to do their jobs. We are terrified of what is happening. The culture of safety is under threat, Sande says.
The newspaper has looked through the helicopter contracts of Statoil , which shows that the number of helicopters in operation on the shelf has gone from 50 to 35. Statoil requires the helicopters to fly more hours a day than before and have shorter intervals between each departure. The helicopter pilots are also threatened with fines if a helicopter is delayed.
– We will never implement efficiency changes that increase the risk level on the shelf. We will let the investigations provide the answers to what happened here. But safety overrides any measure that will help us to reduce costs, head of Statoil, Eldar Sætre, says .
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today
