Royal Dutch Shell said a ruptured North Sea pipeline continued to leak oil on Saturday and that it had been seeping crude into the sea for two days before the company declared it.
Shell said it was continuing to reduce pressure in the pipeline on Saturday, reducing the flow of oil.
Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond told the BBC about 100 tonnes of oil, around 750 barrels, had leaked into the sea.
This compares with almost 5 million barrels spilt into the Gulf of Mexico by BP’s leaking Macondo well last year.
The Anglo-Dutch oil major first revealed the leak late on Friday, but a spokesman said on Saturday it had been detected two days earlier.
A spokeswoman for the British Maritime and Coastguard Agency said it had no information on the status of the clean-up operation and that none of its staff were at the spill site.
Salmond said the amount of oil released was “pretty limited,” but that the government took all such incidents seriously because of the “huge importance of the magnificent marine environment that surrounds Scotland.”
He said he was pleased with the way the operation was going to contain the leak, but an investigation would follow to establish its cause.
Environmental group Greenpeace complained about the lack of information on the leak.
“Right now we don’t know how serious this is. What we do know is that the North Sea is supposed to be ultra-safe, we’re told spills can’t happen there,” oil campaigner Ben Ayliffe said in an e-mailed statement.
Shell said on Friday that one of the wells at the Gannet oil field, 180km east of Aberdeen, Scotland, had been closed, but declined to say if output was reduced.
According to Argus Media, the Gannet field produced about 13,500 barrels of oil between January and April. The field is co-owned with US major Exxon and operated by Shell.
A document available from Shell’s Web site says the Gannet facilities have capacity to export 88,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
RSS