Monthly Reflections June 2026
by Tom Frost, IOGP Health, Safety, Security & Wells Director
Monthly Reflections June 2026
Dear Colleagues,
We published the IOGP safety performance Indicators – 2025 data reports on 18th June 2026 (2025 Data Report; 2025 Fatal Incident Narratives; 2025 High Potential Event Narratives; Executive Summary). The data shows a substantial increase in fatalities amongst IOGP members (52 in 2025) which, along with a 7% decrease in work hours reported, leads to a 75% increase in the Fatal Accident Rate vs 2024 and a 62% increase vs the previous 5-year average. This is despite a 6% reduction in Totable Recordable Injury Rate (TRIR) showing that while we are injuring fewer people the severity increased. This data is certainly a call to action. I would like to share some reflections this month on what the data tells us and where we can focus our efforts to improve.
2025 Data Summary
The 2025 data include some multi-fatality events (5 with 17 fatalities), is dominated by the 35 single-fatality events and include fatal incidents across all types of IOGP member companies. The most frequent causes are line of fire exposures (caught-between, struck-by and dropped objects), explosion fire burns and falls from height. The most frequent activities are maintenance, land transport and drilling. We have seen similar fatal incidents to all of these before. 85% of the fatal incidents relate to breaches of one or more of the IOGP Life Saving Rules. The risks are not new.
Fatalities in process safety, including well control, were lower in 2025 than in 2024. However the number of Tier 1 Process Safety Events was the same and so could easily have resulted in a higher number of fatal incidents.
The IOGP data collected since 1985 is free for all to access (https://data.iogp.org/) and has good search functionality. I have studied all of the 2025 fatal incident narratives and I recommend reviewing areas relevant to your own work-place risks
Insights and Actions
As I have reflected on the 2025 data and especially the high number of fatalities I am reminded of Todd Conklin’s words: “safety is not the absence of events; safety is the presence of defences”. We know which controls work and see areas of excellence (and outcomes) in their application. Defence is not only the controls being in place, but also them continuing to be effective, including barriers within the controls being multi-layered to provide resilience when any critical barrier fails. Central to our defence are all the elements of Human Performance: understanding the human-system interactions and how to build a system and culture that can withstand upsets (human or system) that will inevitably happen.
In addition to learning from incidents, key activities that can support a healthy defence system include: use of the hierarchy of controls to reduce risk; verification & validation to confirm effectiveness of controls; use of leading indicators as an early-warning of where to focus effort to prevent higher-consequence incidents; learning from how work is actually being done; and identifying and closing any gaps in required competence. I shared information on many of these in my May monthly reflections and they are all well covered in the IOGP publications. We have a very good set of tools.
A pattern I see is inconsistent application and effectiveness of proven controls. This is most clear to me in the link between the 9 IOGP Life Saving Rules and the fatal incidents. Since publication in 2018 the majority of fatal incidents involved a breach of one of more LSR (75% to 93% annually). IOGP’s current safety work includes four key areas: adoption & implementation of IOGP guidance (greater reach to the front-line), human performance principles (cultural shift), leading indicators (intervene early), and specific areas of continued high risk informed by the safety data (avoid repeat incidents). This enables the existing industry knowledge and guidance to be used to improve controls being in place and effective at the time and place required and to improve the resilience of the defence systems required to be more impactful on safety outcomes.
In 2026 we will also request data on potential fatalities and permanent impairments (FPI) from our members, increasing our insights into incidents that could, with slightly different circumstances, have resulted in an FPI and helping to better identify enablers and blockers to the consistent application and effectiveness of controls. One of the challenges is to have the right controls for the relevant risks at hand without overwhelming people and systems and losing sight of those right controls. Technology has a big part to play in helping us in this area.
Final Reflections
Tragically we have seen three high profile, multi-fatality events in the last five weeks in the Oil & Gas industry in lifeboat maintenance, process safety and helicopter aviation totalling 30 fatalities. While it is too early to share root causes, it is a stark reminder of how fragile our safety performance is in high-risk activities. We have much work to do collectively to eliminate fatalities, permanent impairments and catastrophic process safety events. We can only make significant progress by collaborating, sharing learnings, verifying and validating our controls, reinforcing barriers and understanding the human-system interactions. I know we have the capacity and motivation – what better reason can here be than saving lives and preventing long-term injuries? This is evident in the conversations I have had and actions I have seen since joining IOGP earlier this year. We need to direct that motivation into positive impact which requires deep understanding of our risks, strengths and weaknesses, a desire to learn and a relentless drive to apply proven and effective controls universally.
Best wishes,
Tom
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