Abstract
The Norwegian oil and gas industry has undergone some turbulent years following the rapid decline in the oil price in 2014. There has been extensive debate on whether the cost-reductions in the industry has led to higher risk level, especially on the offshore installations. The Petroleum Safety Authority bi-annually issues a cross-sectional questionnaire and invites all employees working on offshore and onshore installations to participate. Previous studies have shown a moderate, but significant, relationship between results from this questionnaire and safety performance the following years. In 2017, most of the indexes regarding safety climate and work environment were significantly more negative than previous years. In this study we aim to investigate the underlying causes for the negative development in the safety climate and work environment indexes. We conducted a field study on five installations, including 65 semi-structured interviews, and four days of participatory observations and unstructured interviews at each installation. The findings and implications for the industry are discussed.