Oh boy!
Shell, Cougar helicopter has but ONE S-92 based out of GAO way in the Eastern Gulf Region (perhaps with a back-up S61N), far too little to cover any significant area, especially if not part of an integrated system.
I believe BP is paying for this service, but BP has a scheduled service to their major proiducing locations off-shore.
Shell, if the cost of human life is appreciated by the Oil Companies, why are they allowing conditions in air transportation in the Gulf of Mexico (I am not privy to details concerning marine transportation, by my guess would be the same) to lag back to the sixties or seventies?
The answer is........Unions.
Not the Pilots unions beware, but offshore oil workers unions.
simply put, in the Gulf there are none while in the North Sea those unions are very very strong considering they are in Europe.
The BV-234 virtually disappeared from the passenger transportation scene after the tragic accident in the North Sea, were the Oil Companies involved? Yes, but only to the extent that their unionized workers REFUSED to even sit in one of the Vertols.
When your average offshore oil worker eats nutria and celebrates on Bud Lite you see where the advantages for the Oil Companies lay, otherwise how do you explain that OGP was supposedly behind a redesign requirement for the S-76D fuselage but yet is absolutely absent from the safety aspect of offshore air transportation in the GOM?
So in the end the answer to our questions that arise identical every time there is a crash involving the loss of human life, that answer is also always the same: money and mentality.
And sadly this applies to the HEMS industry of this great Country of "ours" as well.