Offshore Survival – Norway?

Personally No… but the extract below from OPITO’s website [found by simply Googling ‘OPITO Survival Norway‘] may shed some light:

Wednesday, 24 October 2007

The Chief Executives of four National Oil & Gas Associations have finalised a new agreement harmonising a number of offshore safety training standards in the UK, Norway, the Netherlands and Denmark.

The agreement between Oil & Gas UK, OLF (Norway), NSOC-D (Denmark and NOGEPA (Netherlands) will come into effect on 1st November 2007 and is expected to enhance the free movement of workers in the offshore industry and reduce the duplication of training.

Malcolm Webb, Chief Executive of Oil & Gas UK explained: "After three years of work we can now report considerable progress on mutual recognition of basic offshore safety and emergency training. All four national bodies have revisited their standards and made changes that have brought them much closer together. They now recognise safety training given in each of the countries and accept training schools and courses approved by other National Associations."

"This new agreement will provide considerable benefits to our industry. It still allows for minor differences in national requirements, yet enhanced mutual recognition means that an offshore worker travelling from UK to Norway will now do less than four hours additional training as opposed to the current two days, without any loss in the effectiveness of the training"

Also they have a .pdf file on the site that provides more infomation:

http://www.opito.com/library/opito_news/mutual_recognition_document_011107.pdf

To get a definitive answer try contacting:

Tricia Wilson
Standards Manager
Tel: +44 (0) 1224 787820
E: tricia.wilson@opito.net

or

OPITO
Minerva House, Bruntland Road,
Portlethen, Aberdeen AB12 4QL
Tel: +44 (0) 1224 787800
Fax: +44 (0) 1224 787830
Email: info@opito.net
Web: http://www.opito.com

As the last paragraph of James’ quote says

"It still allows for minor differences in national requirements, yet enhanced mutual recognition means that an offshore worker travelling from UK to Norway will now do less than four hours additional training as opposed to the current two days, without any loss in the effectiveness of the training"

You STILL have to do additional training to be valid in Norway, as stated, an extra 0.5 day – but as far as I know it IS needed. This is why when people come on here to say they are going to do their survival/medical before looking for a job I always tell them to ensure they get the full survival that includes Norway plus the Norwegian medical.

Otherwise you may find you still need to do these anyway and may cost more to do seperately.