Offshore Safety Zones Order 2026 Adds Three 500m Zones

If you do not usually read statutory instruments, this one is easier than it looks. The Offshore Installations (Safety Zones) Order 2026 was made on 15 June 2026 and comes into force 21 days after that. Its main job is to keep 500-metre safety zones around three offshore installations while dismantling work continues, and to remove three older zone entries from earlier orders. That may sound narrow, but it matters because offshore rules are often about preventing the kind of single mistake that can become a serious danger to crews and vessels at sea.

So what is a safety zone? In plain English, it is a legally protected ring around an offshore installation. In this order, each ring has a radius of 500 metres, measured from a precise mapped point. The law says vessels cannot enter or remain in that zone unless the Health and Safety Executive agrees, or unless another regulation allows it. The definition of vessel here is wider than many readers might expect. It is not just ships. It can also cover hovercraft, submersible apparatus and installations in transit. **What this means:** the rule is written for busy offshore waters, where several different kinds of craft may be moving through the same space.

The three installations named in the explanatory note are Global Producer III, Solan and Wenlock. All three already had automatic safety zones. This new order repeats those protections in a fresh legal instrument so that the zones stay in place while decommissioning or dismantling is carried through. The timing matters. The note says Global Producer III is intended to be removed by the end of 2027, Solan by the end of 2029, and Wenlock is already being dismantled. So this is less about adding brand-new restrictions and more about making sure a safety gap does not open during a high-risk stage of offshore work.

The legal wording also shows how exact offshore law needs to be. Each zone is tied to latitude and longitude using the World Geodetic System 1984, usually shortened to WGS 84. If that sounds technical, think of it as the global reference system used for modern navigation and mapping. That precision matters because offshore law does not work with vague descriptions like near the platform. It needs a fixed point and a fixed radius. The order applies in waters covered by section 21(7) of the Petroleum Act 1987, which includes UK territorial waters and certain designated offshore areas.

The order does not only add protections. It also edits older legislation by removing three existing entries: Thames Bure Wellhead and Thames Yare Wellhead from the 1997 Order, and the Victoria Subsea Production Well in Block 49/17 of the Victoria Field from a 2007 Order. For readers new to statutory instruments, this is a normal part of how secondary legislation works. A fresh order can create new legal coverage in one place while cleaning up outdated references somewhere else. The text itself does not give the full operational story behind each removal, so the safest reading is that this is legal housekeeping alongside ongoing safety management.

If you are wondering how anyone at sea is supposed to keep track of this, the order gives that answer too. The United Kingdom Hydrographic Office publishes charts for these areas, and mariners are told to keep paper charts updated through Notices to Mariners or to use updating services for electronic charts. Where chart updates have not yet filtered through, radio navigational warnings may also be used. This is an easy detail to skip, but it is one of the most practical parts of the whole instrument. A safety zone only works if the people sailing nearby know it is there, can see it on the chart, and can plan around it in time.

The order was made under section 22 of the Petroleum Act 1987, following proposals from the Health and Safety Executive, and it was signed by Stephen Timms on behalf of the Secretary of State. No full impact assessment was produced because the government says it expects no significant effect on the private, voluntary or public sector. **What it means for you:** this is not a sweeping change to offshore policy. It is a targeted safety rule, written in dense legal language, that keeps exclusion zones in place during dismantling and removes old entries that no longer need to stay on the books. For a general reader, the big lesson is simple: even when an offshore installation is nearing the end of its life, the legal safety buffer around it still matters.