he offshore industry for oil and gas extraction is almost 50 years old since its modest start in the early 60’s. At the first two decades there were significant fatal accidents both in the North Sea but also in other parts of the world (Christou and Konstantinidou, 2012). According to Vinnem (2011), during the first 20 years of the offshore industry, there were several major accidents on installations and during helicopter transportation of personnel to/from shore, in addition to numerous occupational accidents, including a number of fatal diver accidents to be seen in the following. A ‘Major accident’ in the offshore industry is often understood as an accident sequence that is out of control and that has the potential to cause five fatalities or more. This may be for instance a gas leak where ignition has occurred or, in the case of structural failure, the occurrence of a local structural failure. This interpretation is in accordance to the HSE’s definition (HSE, 1995) of “major accident”, which, however, cannot be used directly, owing to the specific reference of ‘potential causing of five or more fatalities’, as discussed in Vinnem et al. (2010). With respect to major accidents on offshore installations, the last multi fatality major accident in the North Sea occurred in July 1988 on Piper Alpha in the North Sea, with a 167 lives loss, owing to a big fire and multiple explosions, following an uncontrolled gas release (Cullen, 1990). This was the worst loss of lives in the offshore industry, exceeding quite distinctly the 123 lives lost in the Norwegian sector some 8 years earlier, with the capsizing of the flotel Alexander L. Kielland in March 1980 (NOU, 1981). After 1988 however, no major accidents have occurred on installations in the North Sea, apart from some multi fatality helicopter accidents to and from the installations.