Shell UK Leak Puts Spotlight Back on Offshore Safety

摘要

The environmental risks associated with offshore oil operations are back in the spotlight, with Royal Dutch Shell battling to contain a second leak from a pipeline beneath its Gannet Alpha platform in the UK North Sea and the Greenland government publishing contingency plans drawn up by UK independent Cairn Energy in the event of an Arctic oil spill. The volume of oil involved in the Gannet Alpha spill is tiny compared to BP's 2010 Macondo disaster in the US Gulf of Mexico - Shell puts the figure at around 1,300 bbl since the original leak was discovered earlier this month, compared with an estimated 4.9 million bbl from Macondo. But Gannet Alpha nonetheless ranks as the UK's worst spill for over a decade.