Who Needs a Safety Case.

Every operator or owner of an offshore installation located in the UK sector of the North Sea or the Atlantic margin must provide it with a Safety Case. Similarly installations operating offshore Holland, Denmark the Faeroes, Greenland, the Falklands and Australia are also required to have Safety Cases. Elsewhere in the world some operators ask the owners of mobile units to provide Safety Cases.

Of course the first question must be: what is an installation? The Guide to the Offshore Installations (Safety Case) Regulations 2005 provides the answer.

An offshore installation is defined in regulation 3(1) of MAR (The UK Management and Administration Regulations) as a structure used for any one of a number of activities….which are:

Exploring for, or exploiting mineral resources by means of a well;
The offshore storage of gas and the recovery of stored gas;
The conveyance of anything by means of a pipe
The provision of accommodation for workers on offshore installations.

Broadly speaking then, Safety Cases are required by the owners and operators of jack-ups, semi-submersibles, FPSOs, platforms and accommodation vessels operating in the jurisdictions mentioned above.

When it comes to "approvals" some administrations accept cases that have been approved by the UK HSE, others have their own approval processes.