Hey SM;
I worked with SND during that time and after, your nauseatingly arrogant aproach(as usual) suggests that you have not fully read SND's post correctly (as usual).
It came down to price, after all we worked for the first company to fully develop HUMS and use it off shore, our training was mainly sim based because it gave a much broader training base All Shell wanted was to pay less than they had 5 years before, they weren't even prepared to allow for inflation.
Lets face it you can spout safety all you want, but in the final analysis it all comes down to the bean counters and the shareholders, the oil companies have a facade of safety and as many safety acronyms as you want, but they will always turn a blind eye when "operational exigiencies" take over.
Now can we get back to a topic for and about pilots and not people with rather strange anti-pilot views given from a standpoint of negligible knowledge of aviation and apparently rather large chips on their shoulders.
VH
P.S SND and Brian FF tells me that pressing the ignore button makes SM disappear.