I periodically work offshore - and have done for over 25 years. My day job however is risk assessment and much of what is being posted here is simply incorrect.
Boeing 737 - the most numerous scheduled airliner - approximately 100 times safer than present N.Sea helicopters.
Boat transfers - not yet routinely used for crew changes, but you can bet that is going to change! To date zero fatalities in 400,000 personnel transfers. A small number and the process is very installation specific and weather dependent. In pure risk terms if managed within the correct operational windows it would be on a par with fixed wing scheduled, not managed that way, it might get to currrent helicopter levels!
For me the fundamental issue is that the Norwegians - if you believe many of the posters here - are so much luckier. Statistics really do not work that way for that length of time. In 15 years their accident rate is so much beter than the UK there has to be some underlying differences. Some of it is I suspect the underlying culture, Noway is a small country and people generally are much more concerned about their fellow countryman (if only because there is a real chance they eiter know or are related to them). You will never see Norwegian pilots posting comments about their passengers the way some on here do!
But over those 15 years in the UK we have had a number of pilots fly serviceable aircraft into the sea, a number of mis-communications and maintenance screw-ups, some design issues. All have resulted in an accident rate which contrary to the O&G industry
PR is not improving, it is heading back to the sort of rate we experienced pre-332.
As some of the offfshore posters have tried to explain that is not acceptable and platitudes will simply not work at this point. To say that helicopter pilots understand the risks is also not true. If you use the standard methods of calculating offshore workers risks, the average N.Sea helicopter pilot is exposed to risk levels which exceed the acceptable limits. The companies response to that is simply to say they meet the rules and that 'safety comes first' - which patently is not the case.
I await with interest the outcome of 'Kill the SP', it should lead to a re-examination of why the UK N.Sea has such a poor safety record. What it will probably do of course, is release a load of 332s for service elsewhere in the world.