LONDON (AP) — Britain's leading oil industry association argued yesterday that it is unnecessary to impose a moratorium on new drilling in the North Sea until the Gulf of Mexico spill is fully investigated because British regulation is better, making a similar disaster there unlikely.

Malcolm Webb, the chief executive of Oil and Gas UK, told lawmakers other countries could learn from British regulation, which is less prescriptive than in the United States but places the onus on operators to put in place procedures necessary to ensure safety.

"Policy and practice are substantially different to those employed in the US Gulf of Mexico and there is, in our opinion no cause for public concern," Webb said, adding that British procedures "militate strongly against the likelihood of anything like Macondo happening here".

Webb was giving evidence — alongside a British executive from Transocean, the company that owns the exploded Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico — to a cross-party committee of lawmakers that is looking into the implications of the Gulf spill for drilling operations in the North Sea. Lawmakers are considering whether the British government was right not to follow US President Barack Obama's lead in slapping a moratorium on new deepwater drilling as they investigate the hazards involved in the practice.

Both Transocean and BP PLC, which operated the Deepwater Horizon platform mining the Macondo well, have operations in the North Sea, where there is a total of 24 drilling rigs and 280 oil and gas installations.

The government has increased the number of rig inspectors in the North Sea following the Gulf disaster, from six to nine, as part of a promise to double the 69 inspections they carried out last year. But environmental campaigners seized on a government agency report last month showing a spike in accidental leaks and serious injuries to workers on offshore platforms as evidence that a moratorium is needed.

The Health and Safety Executive reported that there were 85 incidents in 2009/10 where hydrocarbon was accidentally released — gas escapes considered "potential precursors to a major incident" — compared to 61 the year before.