The long arm of the European Community's bureaucracy is poised to stretch into the North Sea and drive saturation divers to seek work in other parts of the world.
The exodus of experienced divers in response to new legislation on European working conditions, under consideration in Brussels, could result in some deepwater oil and gas fields being shut in with future developments greatly curtailed.
GLOOMY ASSESSMENT
This gloomy view of the diving business in the 1990s comes from the International Association of Underwater Engineering Contractors (AODC), which has been studying the EC's working time directives
AODC represents diving, subsea engineering, ROV and submersible contractors, manufacturers and service companies in Britain where 85% of the saturation diving in the EC takes place.
Sec. Tom Hollobone says under the terms of the directive, divers under saturation who work for 28 days at a stretch would be expected to take at least 10 weeks off between each working period.
And because the main North Sea working weather window is only 7 months from March-April to September-October, saturation divers would be able to work only two shifts/season. North Sea saturation divers work a 28 days on/28 days off schedule.
Without an exemption from the legislation, deep diving in the U.K. and other EC member countries will cease to exist in its present form because experienced divers will head off to other parts of the world where they can dive and make money regularly, says Hollobone.
Men who qualified more recently will remain, leading to less experienced diving teams than at present, with obvious potential effects on safety standards, he adds.
Divers and diving companies had assumed that Britain's refusal to sign the Social Charter at the recent summit of EC heads of state in Maastricht, Netherlands, would have exempted all aspects of the offshore business from new EC-wide legislation on working terms and conditions. To their horror, divers discovered that is not the case.
The British stand in Maastricht against the Social Charter exempts U.K. industries from new legislation in this area but not from directives already in the pipeline before the summit. The working time directive fits into this category.
ONLY THE SPIRIT
The latest draft of this directive provides for derogation for people engaged in offshore exploration or working at sea. This means that employers are required to meet only the spirit of the directive and not the letter of the law that will emerge from the legislation.
Hollobone says in the case of saturation diving this cannot be done realistically. The only alternative is to seek an exemption from the directive.
He points out that the EC has recognized that the road, rail, and airline industries need exemptions because they could not operate round the clock services effectively under the new directive.
And the case for exempting the offshore industry in general, and saturation diving in particular, is more critical than for transport.
Copyright 1992 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.
