Shell North Sea oil spill...
 

Well, since the large oil spill from Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, we know that deep sea oil drilling holds a strong potential for accidents...

This time, it happened on the Europan side of the pond:

Shell North Sea oil spill - live blog | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Shell has proclaimed that the first leak, which occured last Wednesday (and was confirmed by Shell last Friday) is "virtually closed", and the second leak ist almost closed, with a spillage of now "just" 2 barrels per day. Before "virtually closing" the leaks, 1,300 barrels of oil (216 tons) were spilled into the North Sea - more than the total amount of oil spilled in accidents in that part of the Atlantic all over 2009.

This spill is small compared to international ones, such as Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico (up to 70,000 barrels of oil a day, by some estimates) and the Niger delta in Nigeria (14,000 tonnes in 2009 compared to 216 tons in this spill).

But by North Sea oil standards, it's big. We know that there is an oil spill in the north sea at the rate of one a week - thanks to an Foi request - but they are relatively small individually. Between 2005 and 2009, there have been up to 294 spills each year.

But the 216 tons spilled in the last week alone is double the amount spilled across the worst year in the last 10 years - 113 tons in 2003.

Wiggling bare toes,

~*Txim Asawl*~

The oceans just can't catch a break, can they? :facepalm:

Humans never ever learn. We know the seas will recover in time but that still doesn't alter the fact that some of it's inhabitants will die because of this. Nature's fury on the scum responsible, I wonder if they'll ever get to experience the delights of ingesting oil like the creatures in the oceans have to ....

I wish I could help out :(

One spill a week? Yikes - but at least they're small. Whenever I hear "oil spill" I think of massive Exxon-Valdez/Deepwater Horizon -type situations. Still, I was not aware of that rate. Seems like oil rigs are much more prone to spills and accidents than I thought.

Oil spills happen all the time, because of the newsworthy spills at the Deepwater Horizon site, all the spills are getting coverage now. (news agencies want to stir up a news craze, that makes them money)

While it's true, that oil spills happen every day (and each of them is one too many), news coverage has increased over the last years due to the availability of different news agents by means of the WWW - it's not just news agencies digging for bad stuff to report, it's also more interested people asking for news.

No doubt, news agencies are places where bad news are cheered on, since reporting sad and bad things can be stretched out more than publishing a picture of a cute tiger cub that now toddles through the nearby zoo.

http://www.derwesten.de/img/4935647-...665-436539.jpg
She already weighs 10 kilograms... a siberian tiger cub at the Duisburg Zoo.

On the other hand, this news coverage also helps us in discovering the sometimes helpless and hapless attempts of the responsible parties in trying to play it down. The largest regional newspaper group in my region had a cartoon today, dealing with this (the balloons translate to: "No need to worry... we have everything under control...!"):

http://www.derwesten.de/img/4971210-...682-452862.jpg

Wiggling bare toes,

~*Txim Asawl*~