Tag: Shell

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 ...

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

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.

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 ...

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 ...

Shell Oil's conditional permit to drill exploratory wells off Alaska should not have been granted One of the riskiest and most destructive extreme energy oil exploration projects on the planet is moving toward implementation without scientific understanding or technical preparedness -- Shell's oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean of Alaska.On August 4, the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) conditionally approved Shell's plan to drill up to four exploratory wells in the Beaufort Sea of Arctic Alaska starting July 2012. A Los Angeles Times editorial correctly opined, "Shell Oil's conditional permit to drill exploratory wells off Alaska should not have been granted. The hazards of drilling in such waters are in some ways worse than operating thousands of feet underwater. ... It's too early for any approval, conditional or otherwise." Shell still needs several more permits including an air quality permit from the Environmental Protection Agency before they can do any drilling in the Arctic seabed. We must stop it.Soon I'll tell you how BOEMRE is ignoring science to fast-track Shell's dangerous drilling plan, but first here is a brief history of how we got here.During the Bush administration Shell bought leases in both the Beaufort ...