Stop Oilfield Safety

Oil and gas spills in North Sea every week, papers reveal

Serious spills of oil and gas from North Sea platforms are occurring at the rate of one a week, undermining oil companies' claims to be doing everything possible to improve the safety of rigs.

Shell has emerged as one of the top offenders despite promising to clean up its act five years ago after a large accident in which two oil workers died.

Documents obtained by the Guardian record leaks voluntarily declared by the oil companies to the safety regulator, the Health and Safety Executive(HSE) , in a database set up after the Piper Alpha disaster of 6 July 1988 which killed 167 workers. They reveal for the first time the names of companies that have caused more than 100 potentially lethal and largely unpublicised oil and gas spills in the North Sea in 2009 and 2010.

They also deal a significant blow to the government's credibility in supporting the oil industry's fervent desire to drill in the Arctic. Charles Hendry, the energy minister, has said operations to drill in deep Arctic waters by companies such as Cairn Energy off Greenland are "entirely legitimate" as long as they adhere to Britain's "robust" safety regulation.

Shell has been at the forefront of plans to drill in the Arctic waters of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas.

The documents, released under freedom of information legislation, record leaks classed by the regulator as "major" or "significant", which, if ignited, could cause many deaths.

The two rigs with the most frequent oil spills are owned by Shell and the French conglomerate Total . Shell executives regularly claim in public that safety is their most important commitment. Last November, Peter Voser, the Shell chief executive, said: "Safety is, has been, and forever will be, our number one priority. It is our core value."

The Shell-run platform responsible for the most spills, Brent Charlie , first began pumping oil in 1976 from its location 115 miles (180km) north-east of Scotland.

The documents record seven leaks on it over the two-year period, with the worst happening on 26 April last year when four tonnes of leaked gas from one of its columns led to a shutdown of production.

On another occasion, on 30 September 2009, safety inspectors ordered Shell to stop producing oil from Brent Charlie after gas leaked from its ventilation system. Last Friday, the HSE formally threatened to close down some operations on Brent Charlie within two weeks over undisclosed safety issues. Since January this year, Shell has stopped exporting oil from the rig and three others in the Brent oilfield as the company struggles to put right safety problems.

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