Tag: North Sea

The worst spill in British waters and began last Wednesday! Royal Dutch Shell says there are now only two barrels of oil a day leaking from one of its North Sea rigs. But with an estimated two hundred tons having leaked into the water over 6 days, environmentalists say the clean-up could take some time. It's said to be the worst spill in British waters in more than a decade, and began last Wednesday. But it was only acknowledged by Shell two days later. Adam Ramsay from the UK-based People and Planet student organisation, thinks Shell and the government have been complicit in oil industry cover-ups for ages.

A subsea leak had spilled about 1,500 barrels of oil Shell received approval to start removing residual oil and gas from a pipeline that leaked from the Gannet platform in the North Sea, London announced.Shell said last week that divers had stopped flow of oil from its Gannet platform in the North Sea. A subsea leak had spilled about 1,500 barrels of oil when it was first reported Aug. 10 but the escaping amount had slowed to less than one barrel per day.Hugh Shaw, the British secretary of state's representative for maritime salvage and intervention, said Shell was planning to secure the subsea pipeline to the ocean floor to protect it from the threat of storm of tidal damage."Planning is now under way for the safe and timely removal of the gas and oil remaining in the damaged pipeline," he said in a statement.None of the oil from the Gannet platform had reached shore. Most of the initial sheen was dispersed naturally.Shell was criticized for taking two days before issuing public statements about the spill. Shaw said he didn't know about the spill until Aug. 12.Source: UPI

According to Shell yhe oil sheen on the surface has finally disappeared The oil sheen on the surface of the North Sea that followed the UK's worst oil spill for a decade has finally disappeared, according to Shell, after the company managed to plug its leaking pipeline on Friday.Government officials are now launching an investigation into the leak as part of an effort to discover how the spill came about and how to prevent such damage recurring.However, the successful plugging of both the primary and secondary leaks at the Gannet Alpha platform, 180km east of Aberdeen, came as a Scottish newspaper revealed Shell's poor safety record in the region.An investigation by the Sunday Herald found that Shell had been officially censured 25 times in the past six years for breaking safety rules, giving it one of the worst safety records of any major oil company in the UK.Infringements by Shell include repeatedly failing to maintain pipelines - similar to the one that gave rise to the Gannet leak - as well as for failing to report a dangerous incident, and failing to protect workers from hazardous chemicals.The revelations cited come from records held by the government's health and safety executive ...

Being the worst North Sea oil spill in more than a decade Royal Dutch Shell PLC said Friday it has closed a valve from which oil was spilling into the North Sea.The company said this was a "key step" in stopping the leak at its Gannet Alpha platform, the worst North Sea oil spill in more than a decade.Shell said it will now monitor the flowline to make sure the valve remains sealed.Glen Cayley, technical director of Shell's exploration and production activities in Europe, said divers sealed off the valve in a "careful and complex operation.""But we will be watching the line closely over the next 24 hours and beyond," he said."Our next task is to remove the residual oil from inside the depressurized flowline, and that will take time."About 1,300 barrels of oil has spewed into the sea since a pipeline was found to be leaking Aug. 12, the company said, although it claimed that after is shut the well, only one barrel a day had been leaking from the installation to control the build-up of pressure in the pipeline.The Maritime and Coastguard Agency said the spill, 110 miles (180 kilometers) east of Aberdeen, Scotland, has caused a sheen ...

55,000 gallons of oil have leaked in North Sea One year after BP capped its blown out well in the Gulf of Mexico, another spill has dumped oil into yet another sea. Nearly 55,000 gallons of oil have leaked from a Royal Dutch Shell drilling platform off the coast of Scotland. Once again we are faced with the reality that offshore drilling is an inherently perilous venture.The dangers in this industry will never go away. The question is: are we prepared to deal with them?The United Kingdom and Norway have some of the highest standards for offshore operations, risk assessment, and safety management in the world. Yet this latest Shell spill proves that, even in a strong regulatory environment, accidents happen.That is what makes the Obama administration's recent decision to give Shell a tentative go-ahead to drill in the Beaufort Sea off the coast of Alaska so troubling. (You can read my response to that announcement in an Op-Ed I wrote in Thursdays' New York Times.)Drilling in the inhospitable waters of the Arctic Oceans presents far more logistical and environmental challenges than the well-charted North Sea and Gulf of Mexico. The Arctic is dominated by ice-covered waters, long periods of ...

An operation is under way to stop the leak Royal Dutch Shell PLC said Thursday an operation is under way to stop the leak at its Gannet Alpha platform following the worst North Sea oil spill in more than a decade.About 1,300 barrels of oil has spewed into the sea since a pipeline at Shell's Gannet Alpha platform was found to be leaking Aug. 12, the company said, though it claims that after shutting the well, only one barrel a day is leaking from the installation to control the build up of pressure in the pipeline.The pipeline at the Gannet Alpha platform, around 110 miles (180 kilometers) east of Aberdeen, Scotland, still contains up to 660 tons, or 4,620 barrels, of crude oil and needs to be stabilized before it can be shut down.In the first phase of the operation to shut down the leak, engineers have lowered five giant concrete "blankets" on to a stretch of pipeline to place it back on the seabed after it lifted 4 feet (1.2 meters) off the sea floor.Work is ongoing to lay concrete blankets to secure the pipeline, Shell spokesman Steve Harris said."First, we have to make a risk assessment ... to ...

Shell's oil spill in the North Sea this week is the worst in a decade Shell's oil spill in the North Sea this week is the worst in a decade, but compensation for any environmental damage could be in short supply says Susie Wilks from ClientEarth.What is the difference between a sea bird dying because its feathers are coated in crude oil, and a sea bird starving to death because its food source has been destroyed by chemical dispersants used to break up an oil slick? To the bird, not a lot. To a conservation organisation or local authority trying to recover the costs of restoring ecosystems and animal populations, the difference could be everything.In September last year, the Ecologist published an article on the toxic effects of dispersants used to tackle the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The article recounted the chain of events which led to the decimation of bird populations after the Exxon Valdez spill of 1989 when dispersants killed native coastal vegetation. This was replaced by invasive plant species that couldn't withstand the tough Alaskan weather conditions and died, leaving sea birds to starve. It is a tragic example of what lawyers call 'indirect loss'.Liability for ...

216 tonnes of oil are estimated to have spilled fromthe platform Shell said on Tuesday it is working to stop a secondary flow of oil spilling into the North Sea from beneath an offshore platform.An initial leak was brought "under control" last week but work is continuing on a smaller leak from the same source in an area surrounded by marine growth.About 216 tonnes of oil, equal to 1,300 barrels, were estimated to have spilled from the Gannet Alpha platform, 112 miles east of Aberdeen, by Monday.The amount is far greater than the annual totals for the North Sea over the past decade, according to figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change.The total amount of oil discharged into the North Sea in 2009 was 50.93 tonnes.Environmental groups have heavily criticised the operator for the way it has handled the leak, which was first detected on Wednesday. Shell said the current rate of leakage is less than five barrels a day.A Shell spokeswoman said: "The leak source remains the same. The initial release path was stopped on Thursday, however the oil found a second pathway to the sea."Since then we have been working to find the source of the ...

Gulf of Mexico disaster a reminder of what can go wrong offshore The number of potentially catastrophic gas releases on North Sea installations has fallen significantly - a year after the UK government's safety watchdog ordered the industry to "up its game" in countering the threat of leaks offshore.Twelve months ago the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) issued a wake-up call to the oil giants to get their houses in order following revelations that the number of "major and significant" releases of gas and oil had increased by a third to its highest level since 2003. But yesterday it praised the industry for taking a "step in the right direction" after a new report showed the number of releases had fallen to 73 from 85 the previous year.The new offshore safety statistics show that the total number of "dangerous occurrences" - including hydrocarbon releases, adverse weather damage and equipment failure - had also fallen.For the fourth year running, no workers were killed during offshore activities and the past year also saw a fall in the number of major injuries, with 42 reported compared with 50 the previous year.Steve Walker, HSE's head of offshore safety, said: "This year's statistics are a ...

More than 100 potentially lethal oil and gas More than 100 potentially lethal oil and gas spills took place on rigs in the North Sea in 2009 and 2010. Serious spills of oil and gas from North Sea platforms are occurring at the rate of one a week, undermining oil companies' claims to be doing everything possible to improve the safety of rigs.GE Oil & Gas will supply three customized aeroderivative gas turbine-generator modules to provide reliable electric power for a new Chevron floating production unit that will produce oil and gas from the Jack and St. Malo fields in the Gulf of Mexico, approximately 280 miles south of New Orleans and at a water depth of approximately 7,000 feet.