When a company breaches the OPGGS Act, its regulations, or one of its accepted permissioning documents then NOPSEMA may take enforcement action to rectify the breach, hold the responsible parties to account, and/or provide deterrence to the industry.

Typically, enforcement action is taken based on information discovered during an inspection or following an investigation into a reported notifiable incident, workforce complaint or information provided by a third- party.

There are a range of enforcement actions available to NOPSEMA enabling it to select an appropriately proportionate, targeted and effective measure to pursue. This includes issuing an improvement or prohibition notice, requesting a revision or withdrawing acceptance of a key permissioning document, issuing a direction or pursuing prosecution.

Where NOPSEMA takes enforcement action it does so in a transparent, efficient and consistent manner according to the principles of procedural fairness.

In 2018–19, NOPSEMA took 29 enforcement actions comprising 16 improvement notices, 4 requests to revise a key permissioning document, 7 general directions, 1 prohibition notice and 1 prosecution brief. NOPSEMA also took non-statutory compliance action comprising 5 written advice/warnings.

During the reporting period, NOPSEMA issued 29 enforcement actions. Compared to the 19 enforcement actions taken in 2017–18, this reflects an increase of 53 per cent.

Figure 10: Enforcement actions 2018–19

Figure 11: Enforcement actions 2014–15 to 2018–19

Table 4: Enforcement actions 2014–15 to 2018–19