Making life difficult for the ex-Mil crews might seem like a good idea to 'put them in their place' but despite what you might think of them, they do know their stuff and are very experienced at what they do. Do they really need to fly oil and gas for 8 months? That just sounds like being difficult for the sake of it to me. Let's hope that Bristow have a suitable number of civilians with comparable experience to step in on day one if not enough ex Mil pilots are willing, or able to make the move. I for one have already found alternative employment outside of SAR.
Sorry old chap if you feel that you are being hard done by, welcome to the real world. It will not be fixed in stone, but that process has been in use for 20+ years. On exceptional occasions people were dropped straight into slots if they had the rating in hand. That is unlikely to be the case, furthermore some ex-mil & civ drivers didn't come up to scratch as expected. Hence a more selective approach and some useful evaluation time?
Bristow does not have a pool of pilots already working that can turn into SAR pilots overnight. They may have a few interested pilots that would take a lot longer than the proposed route for the ex-mil SAR pilot to bash his/her way through. A type rating and a few months hour/experience building is easy. Years of developing a SAR, multi crew experience portfolio is your asset to the company, not 10,000 hours of flying to a rig down to 300' & .75nm @ night minimums.
(don't get me wrong, landing at night on a semi sub on the limits of wind/sea conditions can be a challenge and a half!)
Good luck in your new found career.