Unions flag North Sea safety fears

Changed working terms have triggered strikes in both the the UK and Norwegian North Sea oil industries

Earlier this summer, hundreds of people gathered at the memorial garden in Aberdeen, where the names of 167 men who died in the Piper Alpha rig disaster 30 years ago were read out. The sombre occasion marked the anniversary of the North Sea's greatest disaster and acted as a reminder, noted by trade body Oil and Gas UK's (OGUK) chief executive Deirdre Michie at the event, that the industry must "keep remembering them so that we don't repeat the mistakes of the past". As the anniversary of the tragedy approached, trade unionists used the spectre of the accident to highlight fears that mistakes could be repeated now if operators continued to cut costs. Jake Molloy, the regional organiser for t