Richard Burden – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Richard Burden on 2016-01-27.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent assessment he has made of the effect of the low oil price since summer 2014 on the number of UK seafarers employed on offshore supply vessels in the North Sea.

Mr Robert Goodwill

The 2015 seafarer statistics have just been published. We estimate that there were 23,380 UK seafarers active at sea in 2015, an increase of 2 per cent on the previous year. We are aware that the current downturn in the offshore sector may not yet be fully reflected in these figures.