Oil and gas companies have been warned to step up safety measures in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.

The move comes as an oil union leader claimed a similar incident could happen in the North Sea.

As the latest plans to plug the well head are abandoned, the environmental impact of millions of gallons of surging into the water is being felt.

Now an oil union leader is warning that because similar rig equipment is in use in the North Sea - the possibility of it happening off Scotland’s coast can not yet be ruled out.

Jake Molloy of the RMT Union said: “If as we suspect there has been equipment failure then who's to say it couldn't happen here. You can have the most stringent regulatory regime in the world but if the equipment fails, it fails.

Oil giant BP is heading the clean-up and containment operation, but the Deepwater Horizon rig was owned by Transocean. Both companies operate in the North Sea.

Oil industry expert Dr Clifford Jones of the University of Aberdeen agrees that there are basis for comparison between conditions in the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea.

He said: “The sort of depths of the well which is currently leaking off the Louisiana coast is the sort of depths one encounters in the North Sea, so there's that basis for comparison.

“Transocean themselves are active in the North Sea, so there again is a basis for comparison.”

However, 22 years since the world’s worst offshore disaster on Piper Alpha killed 167 people, experts say the health and safety lessons have been learnt.

Oil & Gas UK’s Health and Safety Director Robert Paterson said: “The regime that we have over here was set up in the years after Piper Alpha and they were very rigorously looked at to ensure the highest standards of safety operating in the North Sea.”

BP engineers grappling with the leak have abandoned attempts to drop a huge dome on the well head - and are now working on lowering a smaller cap - known as a 'top-hat dome - onto the site.

The company was one of several industry giants called in for talks by EU Energy Minister Gunter Oettinger in a bid to prevent a similar accident.