Norwegian offshore oil workers often face occupational health issues due to the hazardous nature of their work. After years of struggle, they will finally receive compensation.
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00:00This oil platform is a model in a museum.
00:03Bjarne Kopstad of Norway worked on one like it for 20 years.
00:08He doesn't have many good memories of that time, of the 1980s,
00:12when he and his co-workers were habitually exposed to toxic substances.
00:19I worked on the crane.
00:21There, exhaust fumes from the turbine engines would blast right in our faces.
00:26Sometimes, we'd have to come back down after just a few minutes,
00:31and we'd breathe in sulfuric acid while working on the tanks.
00:34That was really bad. Many of us even threw up.
00:40By age 44, Kopstad was unable to work, diagnosed with mental disability.
00:47Now a pensioner, he can barely remember things.
00:49He's quickly overwhelmed, even by visitors in his own home.
00:55I'm always getting dizzy, and I think, can't they just leave?
01:00Can't they see that I'm not doing well?
01:03You get very antisocial.
01:07Former oil rig workers like Kopstad are called the pioneers of Norway's oil age.
01:13Stavanger's oil museum pays tribute to them.
01:17In the 1970s and 80s, they were hired by the state
01:20to extract as much oil and gas from the North Sea as they could, as quickly as possible.
01:25But when workers like Kopstad started asking for compensation
01:28for the damage they'd suffered while working, their pleas fell on deaf ears.
01:33The whole time, so-called experts were making us feel like we were just pretending.
01:39It was pretty nasty.
01:43Not until late 2024 did a majority in Norway's parliament
01:47vote to compensate the former oil workers who had been affected by their unsafe working conditions.
01:52Even so, the government was reluctant, wary of the prospect of a deluge of lawsuits.
01:58No apologies were forthcoming.
02:02I wish to express my thanks to these people.
02:06But as prime minister, I can only offer an apology in certain cases.
02:11I don't wish to do that here.
02:14The opposition accused past governments of prioritizing oil revenues over the health of the oil workers.
02:20At the start of our oil age in the 1970s and 80s,
02:25the government worried that such occurrences might endanger the oil production.
02:31To make sure we could continue to drill and extract oil,
02:36they didn't want to even admit to such things, let alone discuss them.
02:43The North Sea divers did receive compensation for their occupational impairments,
02:49but only after Rolf Goddarm Engebretsen and his colleague Roald Wiegen
02:53had sued the Norwegian government in Strasbourg's European Court of Human Rights.
02:59In oil production, the two pioneer divers worked as deep as 500 meters below the surface.
03:05In 2016, the court ruled that incorrect pressure tables for decompression procedures
03:11were to blame for the brain damage they sustained during that time.
03:16I wanted to retrain as an ambulance driver,
03:19but when the time came for me to take the test, I had forgotten everything.
03:27The doctors told me my cognitive deficit would get worse over the years,
03:35and that clearly has to do with the diving.
03:39That was all it was.
03:44Bjarne Kopstad and other former oil rig workers are still waiting to receive compensation
03:49for the damage they've suffered to their health.
03:52Hundreds have died in the meantime.
03:55The survivors say they don't have much time left.
04:02I suffer from osteoporosis.
04:05It won't end well.
04:08My bones keep getting softer.
04:12It's time something happened, before even more of us are gone.
04:19We won't get our health back either way, nor all those years lost.
04:28Even if the decades of legal wrangling come to an end for Bjarne Kopstad and others,
04:33the painful after-effects of their work in the North Sea will not, as long as they live.