North Sea safety has been placed firmly back in the spotlight following the tragic deaths of four offshore workers in an as-yet-unexplained helicopter accident.
The disaster off the southern tip of Shetland on Friday night was just the latest incident involving a Super Puma-type helicopter in four years of tragedy and near misses.
The oil industry is inherently dangerous, and everyone who goes to work offshore knows and accepts the risks involved.
But that does not abrogate the industry’s collective responsibility to minimise risk wherever possible and ensure that workers have the best possible chance to return safely to their loved ones at the end of each working cycle.
Following the Piper Alpha disaster in 1988, the North Sea’s blackest day, there was a steely determination to ensure such a catastrophe would never be repeated.
Lord Cullen’s inquiry produced scores of recommendations about how to improve safety for those living and working aboard remote platforms.
Those measures became new industry standards and, despite the costs involved, much has continued to be done in the years since to further minimise risk offshore.
However, no regime is foolproof and accidents and incidents will occur regardless of the safeguards in place.
What is clear, however, is that the industry simply cannot afford to be complacent or take their eye off the ball where safety is concerned.
The latest Super Puma transport ditching therefore requires a swift and decisive response from the industry.
The fleet has rightly been grounded on the advice of the Helicopter Safety Steering Group (HSSG) the successor body to the Helicopter Task Group which was formed in the aftermath of another Super Puma tragedy in 2009 which saw 16 offshore workers killed.
In my opinion it should stay so.
There have been assurances regarding the Super Puma’s airworthiness before, but problems have persisted and there are only so many times that workers and their families will be prepared to take them at face value.
The HSSG will not give the green light to the resumption of Super Puma flights until “sufficient factual information” on the causes of the latest ditching has been elicited and remedies, if required, are made.
But I would like to see the group a wide-ranging body made up of representatives of oil and gas firms, contractors, offshore unions, the health and safety executive, Civil Aviation Authority and the helicopter operator firms themselves propose a more radical solution.
Confidence in the aircraft following Friday’s disaster has been dealt another hammer blow, and an industry simply cannot function in a state of paralysis.
It is not as though there aren’t options available, but they may be costly and they may cause offshore production issues in the short to medium term.
Put simply, the Super Puma is not the only helicopter on the market.
There are other helicopters currently serving in the North Sea which have a better safety record and which, if adopted more widely, may give that extra confidence factor to those who have to trust that the transport provided will get them to their destination intact.
Given the inhospitable environments, the type of work involved and the fact tens of thousands of people regularly call our outlying rigs home, the North Sea has an enviable safety record.
That is to be cherished and protected at all costs. In the case of the Super Pumas that means the time has come to invest anew and move on.