Mentioning safety and oil company in the same sentence is an oxymoron. All they're interested in is production, the means by which that is achieved is not a concern. The levels of management that call the shots sit in an office with a revolving door. They occupy said office for a period of probably three years max and then move on to an out of country position. If something blows up the manager responsible for instituting whatever practice it was that lead to the event is no longer in the country and no longer accountable. The new boy on whose watch it happened can fairly say "I didn't know, haven't been in the job long enough to get a handle". Their interest is in not rocking the boat, getting a good pay rise through coming in under budget and moving on up the greasy pole to the next promotion. Remember how you come in under budget? - spend as little as possible on infra structure, maintenance, training etc etc
Pilots as a group don't have the industrial muscle to force any issue. Esso in Australia in fact made their pilots staff, and as such are subject to a yearly appraisal to set their remuneration, as I was told, "You will do as you are told", as in, don't bother us with the legal niceties as to how to conduct operations.
We are just spinning wheels by having this discussion. We had a thread on GOM offshore safety here
http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/165...re-safety.html in Feb, 2005.
In that thread I wrote in regard to a 76 ditching in the GOM 6 Sep, 2005.
"12 POB, aircraft floating on its side and were unable to get the life raft out of the cabin. Captain only had one chamber in his life jacket due to a leak and so had trouble keeping his head above water. The bit that got me though was a Coast Guard fixed wing was launched 4 hours and 54 minutes after the accident to begin a search and found the survivors 25 minutes later. A rescue helo was called and arrived on scene 25 minutes later. Finally rescued after being in the water for 7 hours and 20 minutes in their life jackets. A good part of the time had been night – ditched at 1605, last survivor out of the water at 2325. 5 were seriously injured and 7 with minor. Words fail…………..SAR?" Damn good SAR backup you poor souls have plying your trade there in the GOM. Why don't the oil companies provide their own dedicated SAR with the density of traffic out there? Just being rhetorical for I full well know the answer.
Accident report here
DFW05MA230