Tag Archives: offshore

Breaking: Shell Gannet Alpha oil Spill hits North Sea

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From BBC News last night:

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

The leak was found near the Gannet Alpha platform, 180 km (113 miles) from Aberdeen, Scotland.

The company would not say how much oil may have been spilt so far, 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.

‘Finite amount’

Shell confirmed the leak was continuing but said it was being reduced and was “not a significant spill”.

The UK Department of Energy and Climate Change said it was in contact with Shell and investigating the incident in the usual way.

The department’s spokesman added that it understood from Shell that there was a “finite amount of oil that can be dispersed” but stressed that regulators were taking the leak seriously.

While industry and government downplay the size of the oil spill, this is only the latest in a string of pollution incidents, some major, from this oil rig. The Wall Street Journal confirmed:

The platform had 10 leak incidents in 2009 and 2010, according to an HSE document showing voluntarily declared spills.

PLATFORM’s Ben Amunwa said:

Shell has been rated as one of the worst company’s for safety in the North Sea. This latest oil spill, days after the UN issued a damning report on Shell’s sub-standard practices in Nigeria, is further evidence of serious flaws in its safety culture. Gannet Alpha, at over 18 years old, is now notoriously leaky, much like over half of the oil platforms in the UK North Sea that are now beyond their ‘design-life’. Regulators should be highly concerned about the inherent risks of offshore oil activities, ageing infrastructure and expanding operations in the UK Continental Shelf. These trends increase the risks of daily oil spills to unacceptable levels.

The BBC report also heard from Friends of the Earth Scotland:

“Any spill, however small, should serve as a warning sign and encourage us to look to a clean, renewable energy future, rather than continuing to invest in dirty oil,” said Juliet Swann, head of campaigns at the environmental group.

The field is co-owned by Esso, a subsidiary of US oil firm Exxon but operated by Shell.

PLATFORM’s report on the dire state of oil drilling in the North Sea can be accessed here.

How BP made friends with Mu’ammar Gaddafi

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On Monday, BP CEO Bob Dudley declared that “we remain committed to doing business” in Libya and stressed that offshore operations in the region were still open and continuing. That morning, stories of tanks crushing unarmed protestors in Benghazi and massacres by (British-built) sniper rifles had been front page news. As Dudley spoke, reports emerged of airstrikes targeting demonstrations across the country.

Bob Dudley didn’t amend his earlier statement, nor was he asked to. Media article after media article cited the decision to evacuate “BP staff & families” – only the 40 expat staff of course, not BP’s Libyan employees. Some referred to the controversy over BP’s entry to Libya, and whether the company had lobbied for the Prisoner Transfer Agreement and Al-Megrahi’s release. But no-one questioned BP’s right or Dudley’s judgement in continuing offshore operations, in Libyan waters only miles from Gaddafi’s continued assault?

With Libya’s enormous oil reserves – the largest in Africa with most of the country still unprospected – ever so tempting, BP had been trying to break into Libya for years. The company lobbied hard, utilising the weight and levers of the British foreign energy policy machinery, despite knowing precisely what Gaddafi stood for. Barely a year before BP signed its deal, many protestors were murdered during February 2006 demonstrations in Benghazi.

Success arrived in May 2007, with then-newly appointed BP CEO Tony Hayward and Libya National Oil Company Chairman Shokri Ghanem signed the documents in Libya’s coastal town of Sirt. PM Tony Blair flew in to witness the event and Hayward describing his delight that “Our agreement is the start of an enduring, long-term and mutually beneficial partnership with Libya.“

BP had reason to be excited, and to pay the $350 million signature bonus towards new tanks and new rifles, or to be squirreled away in a hidden bank account. In the company’s words, the contract represented “The single largest exploration commitment in BP’s 100-year history and the single biggest award of exploration acreage by Libya to an international energy company in modern times.” The 54,000 square kilometres of acreage awarded to the company were four times the total of all other projects combined. The offshore Sirt basin block alone covers an area larger than Belgium. The terms of the Production Sharing Agreement signed were also more generous than those previously gained by US company Oxy and Austrian OMV.

Such a vast area in a resource-heavy area was likely to deliver, with estimates that BP would eventually spend more than $20 billion on exploration and extraction infrastructure. The offshore “seismic acquisition” – firing of high-intensity air guns into the ocean – begun in September 2008 alone was described as “one of the largest and most ambitious such projects ever embarked upon by our industry anywhere globally.”

Ian Smale, the head BP North Africa when the deal was struck, proudly described his sense of “partnership” developed with the Libyan regime over many cups of tea. Questioned about BP’s current exposure in Libya at an oil conference on Monday, Smale – now Head of Strategy for BP - responded, “With specific regard to Libya, our first concern is our people and the security and integrity of our operations.” BP’s security in Libya was provided by the military – presumably now either defected or overpowered by the growing opposition. Somehow it’s not surprising that Smale’s first concern was the security and integrity of our operations, even while newspapers were full with reports of atrocities. The frustration is that this is considered acceptable by journalists that quoted him.

Smale and Hayward themselves always knew that they were doing business with a repressive dictator. And they understood that working with Gaddafi would be easier if they could improve his image, and extoll how beneficial a relationship between Libya and BP would be for Britain.

An eight-page gleaming colour celebration of Libya’s “progress” was published. “Libya Rising” tells us that all is good: women are free, the streets are safe, Westerners are loved, people are becoming richer, BP will teach English, the country is open to business. Hints of brutal repression, prisons, restrictions on journalists or lack of democracy there are none. Not even a whiff of unhappiness. BP’s Libya business support manager Ian McGregor assures us that this is “one of the safest places I’ve been to with BP. [...] Initially, most people ask about security. They think it’s very unsafe, or there are a lot of army and guns everywhere. To be honest, it’s the absolute opposite.”

The BP hired journalist goes on to describe how Libya’s “per-capita income is among the continent’s highest”, obscuring the inequitable distribution of that income and rampant poverty. NOC Chairman Dr Ghanem gets to make an appearance as well, explaining how “the importance of Libya as a stable country” makes it a good destination for investment. The regime was, after all, the most stable in Africa – Gaddafi had ruled for 42 years.

Later on Monday, CNBC broadcast part of an interview BP CEO Dudley about a new deal with India’s Reliance Industries. With the Libya story so big, correspondent Rebecca Meehan was eager to ask what he made of the situation in Libya and North Africa. The video shows Dudley relaxed and happy to explain that the situation “has not disrupted any of our businesses at any point so far. Our activities are far away from any of the troubled areas, but time will tell.” According to Meehan, he went on to explain that BP was “committed to improving the business in Libya regardless of the political situation”.
“Regardless of the political situation” - dictatorship or not.

Although to be fair to BP, the company did apparently try to improve the lives of Libyans who might not benefit from the billions of dollars the company planned to transfer to Gaddafi’s regime. On June 14 2010, BP also ran a public road safety event.


BP Road Safety Event – June 2010

 

Wikileaks cables reveal BP cover-up in Azerbaijan

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New Wikileaks cables about another major offshore gas leak in the Caspian give a rare insight into how BP attempts to control the public narratives when it hits crisis and failure. Writing a book about the company’s Caucasus pipelines, we’ve been all over the region, digging for the truth behind these events. Now the sudden release of documents allows a glimpse into the company’s preferred world of secrecy and back-room meetings.

On 17th September 2008 BP scrambled helicopters and rescue vessels to reach the Central Azeri oil rig far out in the Caspian Sea. Lying 130 kilometers offshore from Azerbaijan’s capital city Baku, the country’s largest platform was threatening to explode, with gas leaked rapidly from the seabed,. All 212 staff were rapidly evacuated and the platform was shut down, as were its sister platform, West Azeri. Oil production from the company’s Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli oil field (ACG) plummeted by 500,000 barrels per day.

As the Guardian’s publication of cables relating to the gas leak have revealed, BP was eager to prevent even its commercial partners knowing the full extent of the near disaster. The oil field is run by a consortium of ten companies, including ExxonMobil and the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR). With oil prices high, the shut-down meant a daily loss of $50 million. The gas leak was slashing BP’s partners’ revenue streams, so unsurprisingly Exxon et al were uneasy being kept out of the loop.

Given the importance of oil revenues to Azerbaijan’s budget, state pressure for disclosure might be expected, as Capitol Hill forced BP to provide live streamed video of the Macondo leak in May 2010. However the Wikileaks cables make clear that BP came under no such pressure in Azerbaijan, illustrating the close collusion between company and the Azeri autocracy. President Ilham Aliyev’s government recognises BP’s operations as crucial to propping up his regime, and extremely tight control of the Azeri media ensured that there was next to no coverage of BP’s crisis. The company’s position in the country is so dominant that the head of BP Azerbaijan is widely seen as the second most powerful man in the country .

When the gas leak struck threatening disaster for the Caspian Sea, both BP and the Azeri government were already uptight and nervous over their export pipelines, recently shut down by a combination of Kurdish rebel attack and the Russia-Georgia war.

Barely one month earlier in August, a vast explosion had ripped through the wooded valley near Refahiye in Turkey. Sheets of fire 80 meters high shot into the sky followed by an immense column of smoke as 30,000 barrels of oil from the Azeri fields went up in flames. The fire raged for 6 days, troops were deployed and government ministers arrived by helicopter. The ccompany’s pipeline was shut down and BP declared force majeure claiming ‘an act of terrorism’. Visiting the place of the explosion nine months later, farmers nearby were extremely reluctant to describe how their fields were covered in ash and the temporary evacuation of a village. In large part their silence came from the perception of this foreign-owned pipeline as a Turkish ‘state project’ and thus should not be criticised.

With their primary pipeline shut-down, BP routed Azeri oil through a back-up route. But on the night of 7th August 2008 a Russian fighter flew low near the village of Alkahi- Samgori in eastern Georgia, dropping bombs across a wide valley of grazing land. The Georgian government announced an attempted bombing of the pipeline, whilst BP strenuously denied this was the case. With repeated Russian bombing runs, Georgian Ministers kept making public statements to the West, hoping the US and NATO would be alarmed by the gravity of such an attack on one of Europe’s oil supply lines. But BP had no interest in a news story about the threats to its oil infrastructure; a company executive in Tbilisi told us they chose to ‘close down’ the story. Only five days after this first aerial attack, BP quietly shut down the pipeline. Eight months later, we stood in one of those craters peering out at the pipeline marker posts just yards away.

Within the month, disaster struck again, although this time it was a technical failure and BP’s own fault. But with all the turbulence over the previous months, the company wanted to keep the dampers on media coverage and avoid another story about its failures to run safe and secure operations in the Caucasus and Caspian. The Wikileaks material illustrates how one of the UK’s largest corporations chose not to share crucial information with even its closest partners, actively engaging and disengaging the media in constructing the public narrative of events.

James Marriott and Mika Minio-Paluello of PLATFORM are co-authors of the forthcoming book The Oil Road – to be published by Verso in June 2011.

Cables released by the Guardian on BP in Azerbaijan include:
Aliyev changes tune after Georgia invasion, says BP
BP says ‘rush job’ by Turks on gas pipeline is ‘not inconceivable’
BP under fire over handling of gas leak incident
BP blames gas leak on ‘bad cement job’
BP may never know cause of gas leak, US told

BP & Shell offshore failures in North Sea endanger workers

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As crude continues to pour into the Gulf of Mexico and Tony Hayward can’t work out what he did “to deserve this”, it turns out the company is having problems with offshore operations in the North Sea as well. The British Health & Safety Executive has warned both both BP & Shell that they are failing to meet basic standards, endangering “your employees and others not in your employment by not providing and maintaining a system of work for the control of that operation that was, so far as reasonably practicable, safe”.


Oilworkers union the OILC (RMT) has argued that safety was compromised after operators slashed pay for drill rig workers by up to a fifth last year. Jake Molloy, general secretary of the OILC, which represents many of the estimated 25,000 North Sea offshore workers, said: “Drill workers feel that they’re sold short. They undergo training and do the work and the reward they get is a massive pay cut. It’s not good for safety culture on rigs.”

Alaskan professor stripped of funding for criticising oil companies

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Internationally recognised marine scientist Rick Steiner was forced to resign his position as professor and conservation specialist at the University of Alaska Marine Advisory Program in Anchorage. Prof Steiner has played an important role in recent years in raising concerns over oil company, particularly Shell, operations in Sakhalin, Alaska and Nigeria.

Pressure from the oil industry and the US government National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration pushed the University of Alaska to cut off Prof Steiner’s “Sea Grant” funding. Documents show that Steiner was punished for publicly expressing his concerns over plans for offshore drilling in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, and for criticizing a joint University of Alaska / Shell Oil conference on the issue. Steiner had previously warned that the $300 million paid by the oil industry to the University compromised its academic integrity.


Condemnation of the university has included a scientific commission criticizing oil industry influence over academia. The Commission on Environmental, Economic, and Social Policy (CEESP) of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) released a blistering letter.

Here is Rick Steiner’s resignation statement:

“One of the first things I learned as a kid was to tell the truth, and one of the next things I learned was that some people just don’t want to hear it.

As a marine conservation professor at the University of Alaska for 30 years, my job was to seek and teach the truth, and put science to work in ocean conservation. But, in a state that has become so dependent on oil money, telling the truth about the risks of oil is itself risky business.

University administrators had warned me for years not to “advocate” conservation, and not to “criticize state government as that is where we get our money.” As a tenured professor, I ignored such warnings, thinking that I was protected from retaliation. But for telling my truth about the risks of offshore oil, retaliate they did, and I recently was forced to resign.

Since the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, I’ve worked around the world on risks and impacts of oil in coastal environments. So, when asked by conservation colleagues to offer my perspective on the proposed offshore oil and gas lease sale in Bristol Bay, I did so without reservation. I signed a letter and joined a press conference challenging a 2008 symposium sponsored by Shell Oil and Alaska Sea Grant, designed to show “how oil and fish can co-exist” in Bristol Bay (North Aleutian Basin). We felt the symposium asked the wrong questions, had the wrong participants, and advocated a pro-drilling decision.

And here is the truth I then spoke concerning “how oil and fish can co-exist” in Bristol Bay: They can’t.

The area proposed for offshore drilling is one of the most productive marine ecosystems in the world, supporting some of the most abundant populations of marine mammals, seabirds, crab, bottom fish, and salmon anywhere. The combined impacts and risks of noise, habitat damage, operational discharges, pipelines, terminals, and tanker traffic are enough reason to halt the project.

Add to this the substantial risk of a catastrophic spill, as in the recent platform blowout off northwest Australia, and the no-lease decision is a “no-brainer.” Some ocean areas are too precious to expose to such risk. Bristol Bay is such a place, and we said so.

After I raised these concerns, university administrators met with senior officials at NOAA headquarters and agreed to punish me by terminating the Sea Grant funding I’d had for 30 years. They said they “had a problem” with me and my environmental “advocacy,” and that I could “cause problems nationally.”

A university administrator criticized me for the concerns I raised about the Shell/Sea Grant conference and informed me that because I “regularly take strong public positions on issues of public debate,” my NOAA grant would be terminated. Their offer of state funding for one year was a clumsy, irrelevant distraction. The problem is not the money, but rather the adverse action itself.

As far as we know, this is the first time ever that a university faculty member lost federal funding because of public comments. As for “advocacy,” all faculty advocate, but the unspoken rule here is that it is OK to advocate industrial development but not conservation. The Shell/Sea Grant oil conference was a perfect example. The University of Alaska receives, directly and indirectly, about $300 million per year in oil money, and obviously that kind of money buys considerable favor and influence.

Ironically, when NOAA released its new position on offshore leasing last fall, it had come full-circle and agreed with the concerns we raised a year earlier, concluding that the Bristol Bay lease sale should be canceled because the region was too precious to place at risk from offshore oil development.

Nevertheless, a deliberate decision had already been made in the university to force me out. (As an added incentive they terminated my office lease.) It was clear I could no longer do my conservation work freely within this repressive university environment. Thus, the only option to continue my work was to resign.

Free speech is unequivocal – either you have it, or you don’t. What we’ve learned from my case is that at the University of Alaska, when it comes to criticisms of certain powerful industrial interests, we don’t. That the university is pandering to its political and financial benefactors by punishing me for speaking a truth, which these benefactors consider threatening, is a stinging indictment of the integrity of this institution.

And while university administrators may be getting high-fives down at the Petroleum Club and the well-oiled Alaska Legislature for what they did here, they fail to appreciate the dark cloud their cowardly act leaves over the university and state.

NOAA, university administrators, and their industry puppet-masters know what they did her is wrong. Instead of celebrating, they would be well advised to heed a time-tested lesson of history – as the powerful seek to silence truth and dissent, truth and dissent only become more powerful. And that may be the ultimate reward for their shameful betrayal of public trust in my case.”

New oil discoveries to drive future conflicts in West Africa?

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New oil finds off the coast of West Africa raise fears of oil corporations causing increased militarization in a region not yet touched by the crude resource curse.

In mid-September US corp Anadarko and Irish/British company Tullow announced a major oil-discovery off the coast of Sierra Leone. The FT’s map below shows how this find coupled with Tullow/Anadarko’s existing Jubilee field off Ghana

”established a whole new, active hydrocarbons system that spanned at least 1,000km to the coast of Ghana and perhaps all the way to the Latin American nation of Guinea.”

According to the FT, Tullow & Anadarko have snapped up the right to explore much of the coastline between their Ghanaian field and the Venus well off Sierra Leone. We might also see the larger oil majors like BP or Shell trying to buy their way into this new basin, expanding their existing operations in the Niger Delta further west.

”The basin could be a game changer for the industry. Analysts at Sanford Bernstein believe it could attract big companies which are not present there.”

Tullow Oil is attracting attention both for its rapid expansion in Africa and for concerns over its role in feeding conflict and militarization. In 2008 the Congo-DRC government accused Tullow of enlisting the Ugandan army to cross the border into North Kivu to conduct prolonged military operations inside its territory, and as a result confiscated Tullow’s licences in the region.

However, Tullow was allowed to return to Congo (DRC) after a March 2009 agreement between Pres Museveni of Uganda & Pres Kabila of DRC covering military co-operation & collaboration in exploiting oil discoveries by Lake Albert (on the border). The agreement and joint Ugandan & Congolese attacks on militias in the area in spring seemed to leed to response attacks from the rebels.

In Uganda itself, there has been increasing government talk of the “threat” to the Lake Albert region and oil operations there from “new groups”. This is probably partly to justify the building of “oil surveillance posts” – army bases – being built near to Tullow & Heritage’s oil operations. To construct a new base near Hoima, the government plan to evict 2,000 families living on 10 square miles surrounding a refugee settlement. While local residents & MPs have promised to resist the eviction, an empathetic army spokesman said “They [the refugees] are lucky we are not charging them with criminal trespass.”

Increased conflict connected to Tullow is not restricted to onshore oil extraction. The company owns a 32% stake in offshore oilfields on the Bangladeshi-Burmese border, which have led to recent naval escalation between gun boats over maritime boundaries.

While the Niger Delta’s ongoing conflict is very specific to its history of environmental exploitation and repression of local communities, the role of both the state and oil companies in creating & feeding the conflict is clear. Liberia and Sierra Leone are still recovering from civil wars fuelled by resources destined for European and American markets, including diamonds & timber. The seeming militarising impact of Tullow’s operations elsewhere does not bode well for Sierra Leone, Liberia or Ivory Coast.

Pacific Environment challenge offshore drilling in USA

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Pacific Environment are organising to challenge offshore drilling in the US:

On his way out of Washington, former President Bush pushed through a plan that would sell off almost all of Alaska’s Arctic waters to Big Oil and would also open California’s coastlines to drilling. This plan continues the U.S.’s unmatched contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and threatens coastal economies, vibrant fisheries, traditional Alaska Native communities, and endangered Arctic wildlife. 

In April, new Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar put a halt to this unbalanced plan by extending the public comment period through September. The deadline to act, however, is fast approaching and we need your voice more than ever!

Please urge Secretary Salazar and the Minerals Management Service to stop Arctic oil and gas projects, protect California’s coastlines, and uphold the new Administration’s commitments to addressing climate change, protecting the environment, and respecting the rights of indigenous cultures. If you, rein the US, send him an email by clicking here!

Pacific Environment has witnessed offshore oil and gas development destroy communities, disrupt traditional indigenous cultures, soil beaches, and kill countless numbers of birds, marine mammals, fish, and other wildlife. We have an opportunity to prevent another Exxon Valdez tragedy. Join us today in speaking out against offshore drilling along America’s coastlines and for the adoption of policies that address climate change and protect the Arctic Ocean!

BP keeps digging deeper under Caspian

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The main workhorse of Azeri oil production – the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli field – will peak in 2010, due to BP and consortium members driving an aggressively fast extraction programme. As the revenues poured in over the last eight years, the state budget soared, covering military expansion, President Aliev’s opulent lifestyle and doubtful infrastructure projects including a billion-dollar road bridge in the middle of Baku.

With those in power loath to cut their budgets, the Azeri government is desperate to increase future oil extraction potential. Hence the State Oil Company (SOCAR) is opening up Azerbaijan’s last oil prospects. BP seemingly got first pickings in mid-July, signing an agreement to explore Shafag & Asiman zones deep below the Caspian.

As part of the government’s plan to ensure that all of Azerbaijan’s offshore waters are fully exploited this MOU gives BP the exclusive right to negotiate a production sharing agreement to explore and develop the block, which lies some 125 kilometres (78 miles) to the south east of Baku.

The seabed below the Azeri-controlled section of the Caspian is already well explored – this is a step closer to “full exploitation”. But this agreement is not only the product of the Azeri elite opening up its oil fields further and BP’s management pursuing future profits. Since the early 1990s, British foreign policy has placed an emphasis on prising oil reserves in the former Soviet Union away from Russia. Hence, while the agreement will have been previously negotiated elsewhere, the signing ceremony was orchestrated during a meeting between British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Azeri President Ilham Aliev.

The MOU was signed today in London, in the presence of HE Ilham Aliyev, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, by Rovnag Abdullayev, President of SOCAR, and Andy Inglis, BP’s Chief Executive of Exploration and Production.

The man responsible for landing this deal is already on his way elsewhere. BP Azerbaijan President Bill Schrader has been appointed Chief Operating Officer for TNK-BP, the Russian joint venture that has faces a struggle for control between Russian shareholders and BP. Before spending three years expanding the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline and bringing the mega Shah Deniz gas field on stream, Schrader was based in Indonesia, making the controversial Tangguh LNG project in occupied West Papua a reality.