Unions Question the Safety of Robots on Oil Platforms : Petroleum: High North Sea drilling costs have led firms toward automation. Workers claim the trend is dangerous.

Oil companies, under growing pressure to stem accidents in the North Sea that have killed almost 500 workers since drilling began in the 1960s, are trying to replace humans with robots. But unions say risks rise with fewer workers.

“The trend is to cut the work force,” said Per Skaanes, senior quality assurance adviser at Royal Dutch Shell Group’s Norwegian subsidiary. “Systems have become more reliable and can be operated from a distance.”

The unions charge that firms want to use more robots in the storm-swept North Sea--one of the most dangerous places to work in the world--to cut astronomical costs. They say when machines take over, safety standards slip.

“The main needs are for more safety, more training, more maintenance, not job cuts,” said Roald Larsen, deputy head of the Norwegian Oil Workers Collective Union. “If there are more men on the platform, then we can be safer.”

Both Norway and Britain, the biggest oil producers in Western Europe, have been upgrading safety since an explosion last year at the Piper Alpha platform in the British sector killed 167 men in the world’s worst offshore accident.

Norway has some of the toughest--and most costly--safety standards in the world for drilling and processing the explosive gases and oil recovered from deep below the North Sea.

Each lifeboat on the Gullfaks oil platforms of the Norwegian state oil firm Statoil, for instance, costs about $290,000.

The lifeboats, shaped like pointed submarines, hang vertically from the platform and would free-fall almost 100 feet in case of evacuation. Workers would be strapped in against the shock of the boat hitting the sea.

“The safest platform is one with no one on it,” said Joergen Firing, senior vice president for Safety and Quality Assurance at Statoil.

However, while machines could substitute for people in some of the most dangerous drilling jobs in the North Sea, Firing said, maintenance requirements made it impossible to reduce personnel to zero on large platforms.

A survey in the Stavanger Aftenbladet newspaper last month said 485 people have died in the North Sea since work began more than two decades ago, the highest accident rate of any offshore area.

Apart from Piper Alpha, the worst accident was in the Norwegian sector in 1980, when 123 died after a floating platform for off-duty workers capsized.

Last month, the Norwegian subsidiary of Phillips Petroleum Co., which operates Norway’s Ekofisk field, said it was studying staff cuts and possible remote control of two small platforms that have a total of 90 employees.

“This would cut costs by some 80% to 90% from current levels and extend field lifetime by several years,” said Lars Takla, technical director with Phillips. Remote control would mean staff visiting only for maintenance.

The companies are pushing to cut spending because drilling is vastly expensive. A platform for Norway’s Troll gas field, which has the largest proven reserves of any offshore field in the world, is expected to cost $3.2 billion.

According to the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, which oversees drilling, petroleum costs more to produce in the North Sea than in almost any part of the globe outside the United States.

Britain is producing about 1.98 million barrels per day and Norway about 1.58 million. Oil prices are hovering just under $19 a barrel.

The union’s Larsen criticized cost-cutting drives. He said plans by Statoil to reduce staff meant, for instance, that gas leaks could go unnoticed more easily.

Statoil, Norway’s biggest company, plans to cut about 1,500 man years overall by 1991. A man-year is the work that one person does in a year.

A Statoil survey estimated that for every $1,000 lost from accidents--lost work, medical and transport costs--other factors such as overtime payments, damage and loss of good will toward the firm cost anywhere between $6,000 and $53,000.

Firing said Statoil would spend $36 million to improve safety at its Statfjord A platform after the Piper Alpha disaster. It would spend less on other newer platforms.

Other companies in the North Sea are also reviewing safety.