North Sea Oil Spill...

[Big Orange]

OK, breaking news, Shell is containing an oil leak in the North Sea:

Shell fights North Sea oil spill

Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has said it is working to stop a leak at one of its North Sea oil platforms.

The company would not say how much oil may have been spilt from the Gannet Alpha platform though it said it had "stemmed the leak significantly".

One of the wells at the Gannet oilfield has been closed, but the company would not say if production was reduced.

The company says it has sent a clean-up vessel to the location and has a plane monitoring the surface.

The leak was found in a flow line connecting an oil well to the platform.

"We can confirm we are managing an oil leak in a flow line that serves the Shell-operated Gannet Alpha platform. We deployed a remote-operated vehicle to check for a subsea leak after a light sheen was noticed in the area," said a Shell spokesman.

"We have stemmed the leak significantly and we are taking further measures to isolate it. The subsea well has been shut in, and the flow line is being de-pressurised," he added.

'Finite amount'

The company confirmed the leak was continuing but said it was being significantly reduced.

A spokesperson for the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change said: "We are aware of the incident and we are contact with Shell and we investigating it in the usual way but what we understand from Shell, the spill is limited.

"There is a finite amount of oil that can be released."

The entire Gannet field reportedly produced around 13,500 barrels of oil between January and April of this year.

The field is co-owned by US oil firm Exxon.

BBC

[Zaune]

Well, crap. Didn't the Health and Safety Executive already lay into most of the oil companies for cutting safety corners to maximise profits a few weeks after Deepwater Horizon blew?

[Sea Skimmer]

A leak in a pipeline is a lot less serious then a well leak. Turn off the well, and you’re limited to the oil already in the pipe spilling, which can be serious but its not going to destroy the ocean. Most likely not even all the oil in the pipe will spill because once pressure falls off it simply wont want to come out very quickly, and the rig can still try to pump the line clear.

[Big Orange]

Also oil wells and pipes in the Northern Atlantic are supposedly in shallower waters, so less of a logistical night terror than the Mexican Gulf well was.