Chopper probe told: Learn from other countries

Canada can learn from safety advances in Norway and other countries with offshore oil sites, a risk consultant has told an inquiry into helicopter safety off Newfoundland.

Kimberley Turner, head of Australian-based Aerosafe Risk Management, outlined global trends as hearings resumed Monday in St. John's at theinquiry called after Cougar Flight 491 crashed into the North Atlantic in 2009, killing 17 people.

Turner said the trendsinclude a growing tendency to separate safety oversight from the money-making goals of the oil industry.

"The separation of power from safety and then the commercial and production side of things" has led to the creation of distinct safety agencies in Norway, the United Kingdom and Australia, Turner said.

"And that is not unusual for a regulator that has a safety oversight function to really examine where safety sits."

Critics have called for a separation of regulatory duties in Newfoundland and Labrador. They say the federal-provincial board that licenses and oversees oil activity off the province is in a conflict of interest.

The Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board is mandated to recover the "maximum" value of offshore resources while also protecting workers and the environment.

Chairman Max Ruelokke assured reporters earlier in Junethat environmental protection is a top priority, second only to worker and overall safety. He emphasized that the board's chief safety officer can act independently.

Inquiry commissioner Robert Wells is investigating whether helicopter travel is as safe as is reasonably practical. He asked Turner's company to survey workers and compare oversight regimes and safety cultures for offshore oil sectors around the world.

Turner said related global trends include a regulatory "philosophical shift" from compliance checklists to performance and goal-based approaches.

Risk management plans are part of this move away from inspection audits that merely check off whether rules are followed, Turner explained. Instead, the most "mature" regulators now also conduct inspections of operator safety systems and the extent to which they avert defined risk, she said.

In Norway, which has been described as an industry safety leader, audits are publicly posted online, Turner added. It's the kind of transparency that can boost the confidence of offshore workers and the general public, she said.

Turner highlighted the recently released Aerosafe survey of offshore workers. Of 991 respondents, 38 per cent said they'd rather travel to six offshore sites by boat or other means to avoid boarding a chopper.

Top anxieties included helicopter mechanical issues, ill-fitting immersion suits and cramped seating that could hamper escape in a ditching.

Workers were surveyed over six weeks starting last April 1 just over a year after the Cougar Flight 491 disaster of March 12, 2009.

New concern since Gulf spill

Public concern about the environmental risks of offshore drilling has soared since the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon rig blew up on April 20, killing 11 workers. Oil has gushed into the Gulf of Mexico since, fouling coastlines and coating ocean wildlife with black ooze.

St. John's East MP Jack Harris, the NDP defence critic, is a trained lawyer with standing at the inquiry. He asked Turner to clarify whether she was endorsing a move away from regulation in favour of goal-based safety regimes.

Turner stressed that, ideally, efforts to better assess and communicate risk and accountability are in addition to legislated safety enforcement.

Harris later told reporters that a recent softening of federal regulations essentially allows oil companies to set their own standards.

"They've already made the shift to performance-based guidelines and all of that, but they've got no teeth because the regulations aren't there.

"Safety has to be seen as something that's by itself significant and important. The industry has to be seen as adhering to the standards set by others not by themselves."

Public hearings are slated to continue through Wednesday to hear from other expert witnesses who produced reports for the inquiry on cold-water training, survival and immersion suits.