The price of oil continues to be low, despite recent increase. This is not new to an industry that is used to instability in price. However, it creates pressure globally to reduce CAPEX and OPEX including downsizing in staff. Nevertheless, both industry and regulators need to ensure that there is no compromise on the improvement of process safety management programmes.

Process safety management programmes adopted internationally are mature. The Safety Case approach to the management of offshore safety underwent major developments in the 1990s following the Piper Alpha incident and the publication of the Cullen report. Since then improvements have been evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Even the newer Safety and Environmental Management System (SEMS) rule for offshore Gulf of Mexico operations uses the same basic process safety structure. It does not introduce any radically new ideas or concepts. However, improvement on regulations for safety performance is crucial to successful operational excellence in the oil and gas industry particularly in offshore operations.