Tag: North Sea

Many platforms are severely corroded and have exceeded their intended lifespan by up to 20 years It comes amid growing concerns raised by the Health and Safety executive that many companies are not maintaining the installations - most of which are now working decades beyond their intended lifespan.Shell's oil leak two weeks ago was described as substantial. Over 200 tonnes of oil spilled out into the North Sea. That leak may have been plugged but it has raised the question of how long it is before we do face disaster.An offshore worker filmed pictures showing how corroded his platform has become through ageing. A few taps with a hammer and the gratings, hundreds of feet above the North Sea, fall away.Fifty per cent of the oil and gas platforms off Aberdeen have exceeded their original lifespan, some by more than 20 years - a number which is increasing.A rise in incidents due to maintenance failures has led the Health and Safety Executive to conclude there is now a high risk of a major incident.Bill Campbell, a former auditor at Shell who helped conduct the investigation into the Brent Bravo accident in 2003 which killed two men, now campaigns for better ...

It is one of Germany's most unusual ships One of Germany's most unusual ships, the 12,800dwt E-Ship 1, has sailed through the Kiel Canal for the first time adding the Baltic to her areas of operation.The 130m ship used the waterway, linking the North Sea and the Baltic, on her way to Klaipeda in Lithuania from Emden. She was carrying a cargo of wind energy rotors for owners Enercon.E-Ship 1 is unusual because of her four 27m high and 4m diameter Flettner rotors and Magnus Effect propulsion. She is also unusual because she was built at two German shipyards. She sailed for the first time last year after completion at Cassens Shipyard in Emden but was designed by owners Enercon in partnership with Lindenau Schiffswerft in Kiel, where her keel was laid in 2007. Enercon moved the largely finished hull to Emden in 2009 after insolvency trouble at Lindenau.Reports say E-Ship 1 is equipped with Mitsubishi marine diesels with a total output of 3.5MW, but Enercon has not released exact details of her propulsion system. The firm does however claim projected fuel savings with the rotors of 30-40% at a speed of 16knots.Source: The Motorship

The Dogger Bank is home to a fantastic array of sea life and habitats An area of sandbank in the middle of the North Sea that is almost double the size of Devon is set to become Britain's latest marine protected area.The Dogger Bank, in the offshore waters of the UK, the Netherlands and Germany, is home to wildlife including crabs, a type of starfish known as brittlestars and clams, and is an important site for fish such as plaice, sole and sand eels.The 12,000 sq km (4,600 sq mile) UK section of the shallow seabed has been submitted to the European Commission (EC) to be included in a Europe-wide network of nature protection sites.It now has candidate Special Area of Conservation (SAC) status, which means it must be protected from damaging activities which could harm the wildlife and habitats within it.The Government said the Dogger Bank was the largest marine site to be submitted by a European Union (EU) country and the UK section will link up with existing protected areas in German and Dutch waters.Natural Environment Minister Richard Benyon said: "The thousands of species and habitats in our seas need just the same protection as those on land."The ...

But green groups remain angry over slow public reporting of leak Shell has defended its much-criticised reporting of this month's North Sea oil spill, but has stopped short of providing a full picture of how the decision to announce the spill was made.The company has recently been under fire from green groups. These have accused the oil giant of failing to provide transparent information on the largest UK oil spill in the past decade, after it emerged that the spill was first detected on Wednesday 10th August, but was not publicly confirmed until two days later.Dr Richard Dixon of WWF Scotland accused the company of only "grudgingly" releasing information to the public, while Per Fischer, communications officer at Friends of the Earth Scotland, said Shell was guilty of providing "drip-fed information" to the press and public.Green NGOs also accused Shell of only issuing a public statement on the leak after industry magazine Upstream approached the company on Friday 12 August, seeking confirmation on reports that there was a major spill in the North Sea. The incident has further fuelled allegations that oil companies frequently fail to provide public updates on oil leaks, ensuring that many smaller spills go largely unnoticed.But ...

Last Friday, Shell divers closed the relief valve from which oil had been seeping Shell issues update regarding the oil leak beneath an offshore platform in the North Sea as follows:No oil has been released from the flowline, or release valve, since that point. Continuous monitoring is being carried out to ensure that no releases have occurred.A reconnaissance flight on Tuesday evening reported that there was no sheen on the surface. Small sheens have appeared from time to time as dredging work is carried out to establish the source of the original leak. They have quickly dissipated and it is to be anticipated that this will occur occasionally as work disturbs the seabed.To date, 72 concrete mats have been successfully laid on the flowline in a process to secure it to the seabed. This work has now secured all of the buoyant sections of pipe to the seabed. More mats will be laid over the coming days.Work has begun to evaluate the various options for evacuating the remaining mixture of gas, oil and water in the pipe. This process will take a number of weeks. Once it is completed, plans will be put to the Secretary of State's Representative for ...

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 ...