I know that N Sea operators generally do only accept those with greater hours, presumably for this reason, BUT as the number of pilots available falls, they are lowering their requirements and this may lead to problems in the future, " a strong building requires good foundations"
Although you may think that they are lowering their requirements, what you should find is that there is a move towards competency rather than experience. To say that a pilot with thousands of hours experience is much better than one with only a few hundred is not exactly true. Unless the training and checking of any pilot is "up to scratch", you can only really say that a pilot has x amount of experience.
I'm not saying that experience doesn't count, it just depends what sort of experience it is. As some say about computers, rubbish in = rubbish out!
Competency based training programmes do require a certain amount of experience but also require training and testing in excedence of the statutory minimums laid down by the authority. As others have already said on this thread, there is a difference between the required standards and best practices.