Hippolite,
You've attempted to paint the Gulf of Mexico with a very broad brush. I think the result is an inaccurate picture of what actually goes on here.
Certainly there are cowboy pilots and shoddy operators, but they are not representative of what we do here in this day and age.
For the majority of crew change trips a well equipped, appropriately sized twin is the preferred aircraft. However, for operations within a field (i.e. up to a dozen or more satellite platforms within perhaps a five mile circle) the ideal aircraft from both a utility and safety perspective is a small single-engine, single-pilot ship such as the Bell 206.
Federal aviation regulations require that all aircraft, single or twin, either compute weight and balance or use an approved loading schedule which ensures the aircraft will remain within its limitations. Documentation is required for all flights. Passengers' names and weights are recorded for each leg. Performance calculations are normally simple as they are predicated on OAT (our high power demand operations typically occur within a couple hundred feet of sea level).
There are still many small ships operating in the GoM which are minimally instrumented, but customers are increasingly requiring better capability in the aircraft they contract. My company has required an instrument rating of all newly hired pilots for quite some time. They recently made it a retroactive requirement that all pilots who did not have the rating go out and obtain it.
Additionally, the major helicopter operators have put in place policies requiring base managers to become much more involved in the weather and fuel decisions their pilots make to dispatch or to continue a flight. This has relieved individual pilots of much of the pressure they might have felt in the past.
The bottom line is; yes there are "bottom feeders" whose only interest is in doing the job at minimal cost. Fortunately, where I work we don't see so much of that. In the UK a very conservative civil aviation authority mandates safety. In the US it's quite often liability concerns and lawyers. Eventually, both probably achieve the same end, but which is better ... I guess that's open to debate.
-Stan-