Oil and Gas New Zealand’s chief executive Andrew Jefferies was in Dunedin yesterday to speak at the Otago Southland Employers Association’s annual Health and Safety Forum.
The forum explored the benefits of taking a proactive approach that extends beyond ensuring physical safety to considering overall wellbeing.
It brought together some speakers from around the country who represent the latest in health and safety thinking, including learning from Covid-19.
Speakers included National MP and former leader Todd Muller, who spoke about the mental turmoil that cost him a job as leader of the party.
Mr Jefferies acknowledged that there had been large tragedies in the oil and gas industry over the years.
The worst was the Piper Alpha disaster in the North Sea, UK, when 167 people were killed in July 1988, and closer to home at Pike River, on the West Coast, 29 men died in 2010.
Around the world, injury statistics are collected by determining if the person had to take the next day off work.
Looking at Australian data, the lost time injury frequency rates for the oil and gas industry was at 0.4 hours per million hours, worked, compared with the forestry industry at 11.9 hours, Mr Jefferies said.
"I used to say to the guys and girls working on our platform — you’re about four times safer being at work," he said.
The industry uses a theory called the Swiss cheese model when talking about health and safety.
"And if the holes line up, then that hazard is going to cause an event," he said.
The aim was to get rid of those holes or make the holes really small, Mr Jefferies said.
The oil and gas industry used four tools for health and safety: design, communication, construction and management. All of them were in place to identify risks.
Mr Jefferies believed the health and safety culture of any company was set by the board and management.
"Worker participation can be a big part of that, so as employers we need to ensure we are talking to our workforce about health and safety," he said.
It was also important for company directors to fully comprehend the business to understand the health and safety of the company as well, Mr Jefferies said.
