Shell North Sea oil spill...

[txim_asawl]

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*~