So let’s deregulate and make a dash for abandonment at minimum cost and hope we get lucky seems to be the game.  And also let’s put the Chairman of the North Sea’s worst offending Company in charge of the process. Hopefully sense will prevail before the next almost inevitable major accident event when one of the 85 gas leaks per year coincides with a source of ignition.

COMMENT SENT BY BILL CAMPBELL TO ROWENA MASON ON HER RECENT TELEGRAPH ARTICLE: Former Shell chairman James Smith to lead deregulation of UK oil and gas industry

Rowena – interesting article

With some 50 serious injuries a year (up by 20) and over 400 reported dangerous occurrences 85 of which were losses of containment of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere (1) it seems an inappropriate time to reduce regulation. Apart from the recent oil spill on Gannet where Shell accept a causal factor may have been lack of maintenance and inspection, with the HSE stating publicly that lack of maintenance offshore could have severe consequences generally across the oilfield, it seems that better and more proactive oversight of this industry is needed rather than less.

(1) Based on public domain data from HSE for year 2009/10, this year figs not yet available, dangerous occurrence is by Government definition under the relevant legislation.

With 50 % of offshore installations well past their original design life (normally 25 years) with some by as much as 20 years,  failure is endemic due to ageing, what we call age related failure.  The failure mechanisms effect all aspects of the installation where carbon steel is used from the primary structure to pipe, grating, floors, decks et al the list goes on.  The corrosion grows and spreads, perniciously like a cancer, through the whole rig, in what is a relatively warm but highly saline atmosphere causing the surface corrosion of metal allied in pipelines with internal erosion caused by reservoir sands carried to the surface by the flow of oil and gas.

Assets which go beyond their design life need more expenditure on maintenance, not less.  And, beyond the design life, sometimes called operating or useful life, the risks of continued operation increase with time.

Just at the time when costs are rising revenue is in sharp decline as the reservoirs deplete.  Deregulation can be motivated I suspect as a cost saving initiative

All the circumstances we need to exist for the most common cause of major accidents worldwide that is bad behaviour driven by conflict of interest. In this case the conflict between cost of increased maintenance, inspection and monitoring and loss of revenue to support these costs without going into the red.

So let’s deregulate and make a dash for abandonment at minimum cost and hope we get lucky seems to be the game.  And also let’s put the Chairman of the North Sea’s worst offending Company in charge of the process. ( Freedom of Information data shows Shell is the industry leader in gas leaks by a good measure).  It for example had Brent Charlie shut down in January with the HSE concerned about potential catastrophic risks if it continued to operate.  So Mr Smith’s appointment!  He is probably a nice man but Fox in charge of the hen house comes to mind.

Hopefully sense will prevail before the next almost inevitable major accident event when one of the 85 gas leaks per year coincides with a source of ignition.

regards

Bill Campbell

PS: I have contributed input to your paper before, also Guardian and Times, Channel 4, STV, BBC etc

STATEMENT ISSUED BY MOSOP (Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People)

8 September 2011

MOSOP URGES Dr. GOODLUCK JONATHAN’ PRESIDENTIAL COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN TO END CORRUPTION IN NIGERIA.

In a congratulatory message today to Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, MOSOP President/Spokesman, Dr. Goodluck Diigbo implored Bishop Kukah on his installation as the Bishop of Sokoto Diocese to champion the cause to end corruption in Nigeria and to promote economic and political justice.

Dr. said: “In your capacity as Chairman of the Ogoni –Shell Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation Presidential Committee, I implore you to use your new position to work towards the meeting of minds in the Ogoni situation, in a way that can usher in peace and promote economic and political justice in Nigeria.

In addition, I further implore you to champion the cause to end corruption, misrule, internal colonialism and arrogance of power in Nigeria. The Ogoni people are staying strong, and we will continue to count on your support.The history of Christianity reminds us that Christianity was officially persecuted for three centuries. The same history tells us that Roman Christianity is the mother of Western civilization. The Ogoni people are full of hopes and dreams that the day is coming when the Ogoni story will become the story of Christianity and Western civilization.”

The full Statement is reproduced below:

Dear Rt. Rev. Msgr Matthew Hassan Kukah,

I write to congratulate you for the great rise on your episcopal ordination and installation as Bishop of Sokoto Diocese today, Thursday, September 8, 2011 following your recent elevation by His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI.

On behalf of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, MOSOP, I thank God for your lift. God remains the greatest judge. God puts down one, and lifts up another.

In your capacity as Chairman of the Ogoni –Shell Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation Presidential Committee, I implore you to use your new position to work towards the meeting of minds in the Ogoni situation, in a way that can usher in peace and promote economic and political justice in Nigeria. In addition, I further implore you to champion the cause to end corruption, misrule, internal colonialism and arrogance of power in Nigeria. The Ogoni people are staying strong, and we will continue to count on your support.

The history of Christianity reminds us that Christianity was officially persecuted for three centuries. The same history tells us that Roman Christianity is the mother of Western civilization.

The Ogoni people are full of hopes and dreams that the day is coming when the Ogoni story will become the story of Christianity and Western civilization.

Dr. Goodluck Diigbo
MOSOP President/Spokesman

Released by:
Tambari Deekor
Assist. Editor, MOSOP Media
tdeekor88@gmail.com

The Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) is an Ogoni-based non-governmental, non-political apex organisation of the Ogoni ethnic minority people of South-Eastern Nigeria and was founded in 1990 with the mandate to campaign non-violently to:

• Promote democratic awareness;

• Protect the environment of the Ogoni People;

• Seek social, economic and physical development for the region;

• Protect the cultural rights and practices of the Ogoni people; and

• Seek appropriate rights of self-determination for the Ogoni people.

WHAT WILL BILL CAMPBELL MAKE OF THIS? PUTTING A FOX IN CHARGE OF THE HEN HOUSE?

The Government has appointed James Smith, the former UK chairman of Royal Dutch Shell, to lead a radical deregulation of the oil and gas industry.

By Rowena Mason 6:00AM BST 07 Sep 2011

The organization tasked with policing safety on U.K. North Sea oil and gas installations said Wednesday it is prepared to change the way it publishes information on leaks and other incidents, amid criticism of a lack of transparency around Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s recent spill at the Gannet Alpha platform.

By Alexis Flynn Published September 07, 2011 Dow Jones Newswires

ABERDEEN, Scotland -(Dow Jones)- The organization tasked with policing safety on U.K. North Sea oil and gas installations said Wednesday it is prepared to change the way it publishes information on leaks and other incidents, amid criticism of a lack of transparency around Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s (RDSA) recent spill at the Gannet Alpha platform.

“There has been pressure on us to be more transparent, there is more expected on this,” said Steve Walker, head of the Health and Safety Executive’s offshore division. “We could do it in a more attributable way.”

Walker said the HSE could by next year release more detailed information identifying companies responsible for safety and environmental breaches.

“There is now a drive for us to actually release that data [and say] ‘here is a hydrocarbon release by so and so on such a such a such date,’” said Walker.

Under the current system, interested parties have request data under the Freedom of Information Act, which allows citizens to obtain sensitive documents held by public service organizations.

However, criticism has mounted in recent weeks following an undersea pipeline leak at a Shell platform and the subsequent release of crude oil into the North Sea, the U.K.’s biggest spill in a decade. HSE data obtained under the Act showed the company to be among the worst offenders when it came to recent hydrocarbon releases.

Walker said any move to “name and shame” negligent operators would have to be done in accord with the industry.

“We are in discussions with Oil and Gas UK, because it is a sensitive issue, and if we are going to chance it we need to get the views of the industry, and I think they are pretty supportive of that,” said Walker.

Copyright © 2011 Dow Jones Newswires

SOURCE ARTICLE

Any serious oil spill in the ice of the Arctic, the “new frontier” for oil exploration, is likely to be an uncontrollable environmental disaster despoiling vast areas of the world’s most untouched ecosystem, one of the world’s leading polar scientists has told The Independent.

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor: Tuesday, 6 September 2011

Any serious oil spill in the ice of the Arctic, the “new frontier” for oil exploration, is likely to be an uncontrollable environmental disaster despoiling vast areas of the world’s most untouched ecosystem, one of the world’s leading polar scientists has told The Independent.

Oil from an undersea leak will not only be very hard to deal with in Arctic conditions, it will interact with the surface sea ice and become absorbed in it, and will be transported by it for as much as 1,000 miles across the ocean, according to Peter Wadhams, Professor of ocean physics at the University of Cambridge.

The interaction, discovered in large-scale experiments 30 years ago, means that the Arctic oil rush, which was given a huge boost last week with a $3.2 billion (£1.9bn) investment from Exxon Mobil, is likely to be the riskiest form of oil exploration ever undertaken, said Professor Wadhams, who is a former director of Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research Institute.

“If there is serious oil spill under ice in the Arctic it will be very hard, if not impossible to stop it becoming an environmental catastrophe,” he said. “It will be very much harder to deal with than a major spill in open water.”

The world’s oil companies are now turning to the Far North as supplies elsewhere across the globe start to run out or become harder to extract, and both the potential profits from Arctic oil, and the fears about the damage that extracting it may do, are enormous.

The area north of the Arctic Circle is thought to contain as much as 160 billion barrels of oil, more than a quarter of the world’s undiscovered reserves. Some of it is under land, as in Alaska’s North Slope field, but large amounts of it are known to lie under the seabeds of the Arctic Ocean and Baffin Bay off Greenland, which are ice-covered for all or part of the year, depending on the region.

It is this offshore oil which is now the focus of a new exploration rush, with Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon among the strongest contenders, focusing on the Arctic Ocean itself, while the first wells in the sea off Greenland are already being drilled by Edinburgh-based Cairn Energy.

However, many observers are seriously alarmed about the spill risks in the extreme conditions, especially in the wake of BP’s calamitous leak at the Deepwater Horizon platform in the Gulf of Mexico last year, which could not be controlled for three months, released as much as five million barrels of crude, and came close to wrecking the company.

“A spill in the Arctic would essentially make dealing with something like Deepwater Horizon look almost straightforward,” said Ben Ayliffe, polar campaigner for Greenpeace.

“There are problems with ice encroachment, the remoteness of the Arctic, darkness, extreme weather, deep water, high seas, freezing conditions and icebergs. Basically it would mean that responding to a Gulf of Mexico-style spill off somewhere like Greenland would be impossible.”

Yet Professor Wadhams, who was the first civilian scientist to travel under the Arctic ice in a submarine, in 1971, and who has made five more under-ice trips, is spotlighting an even greater level of concern with his knowledge of how oil and ice interact – with potentially calamitous consequences.

It stems from large-scale experiments he took part in off the coast of Canada in the 1970s, in which substantial quantities of oil were deliberately released into the frozen sea, to see how it behaved. “What we found, and one of the great difficulties, is that spilled oil becomes encapsulated in the ice and is then transported around the Arctic by it,” he said.

“The oil is caught underneath the ice, so you can’t get at immediately to clean it up or burn it off. You don’t know exactly where it is, and then it gets encapsulated in the new ice which grows underneath, so you then have a kind of oil sandwich inside the pack ice.

“And that’s being transported around the Arctic and isn’t released until spring, when it may be several hundred or even a thousand miles from the source of the spill, so you can have a huge area of the Arctic becoming polluted by oil without initially it being clear where that oil is.”

He added: “Once it is released in springtime, it’s very toxic, because the encapsulation in the ice preserves the oil from weathering, so that instead of the lighter fraction evaporating and the heavier fraction becoming just tar balls, you have fresh oil being released exactly where the ice is melting, usually round the edge of the pack ice where you’ve got a lot of migratory birds.

“Not great for the environment. In fact, I think the appropriate word would be ‘terrible’.”

Professor Wadhams is so concerned that he is helping to organise a high-level scientific workshop on the subject of oil spills in sea ice, in Italy later this month.

While companies such as Cairn Energy stress that they will be drilling exploratory wells only in the summer months, in areas of sea which are ice-free, it is likely that once oil production actually begins, it will be a year-round business and continue through the winter when production facilities are ice-bound. “We would need to produce all year round, in order to make the whole thing worthwhile,” a spokesman for Shell said at the weekend.

The oil companies insist that they are aware of the risks and have prepared detailed oil spill response plans, but Professor Wadhams, who has read several of them, said they did not amount to comprehensive plans for dealing with oil in ice.

The expert

* Professor Peter Wadhams, of Cambridge University, is an oceanographer and glaciologist and one of the world’s leading experts on polar ice. He is celebrated for submarine voyages beneath it.

His concern about how sea ice will interact with oil from a spill as the Arctic is opened up for drilling is so great that he has helped to convene an international high-level academic seminar to discuss Oil Spills in Sea Ice – and Future at Italy’s Polar Geographical Institute in Fermo, Italy, from 20-23 September.

SOURCE ARTICLE

Survival’s Director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘It’s a sad irony that people buy Shell’s ethanol as an ‘ethical’ alternative to fossil fuels: there’s certainly nothing ethical about its horrendous treatment of the Guarani.

Guarani man. Shell is using sugarcane planted on Guarani land. © F. Watson/Survival

Indians of the Guarani tribe in Brazil have demanded that energy giant Shell stop using their ancestral land for ethanol production.

Ambrosio Vilhalva, a Guarani man from one of the communities affected, told Survival, ‘Shell must leave our land… the companies must stop using indigenous land. We want justice, we want our land to be mapped out and protected for us’.

Shell is united with Brazilian ethanol company Cosan, in a joint venture company called Raizen. Some of Raizen’s ethanol, sold as a biofuel, is produced from sugarcane grown on the Guarani’s ancestral land.

In a letter to the companies, the Indians warn that, ‘Since the factory began to operate, all our health has deteriorated – children, adults and animals’.

The chemicals used on the sugarcane plantations are thought to be causing acute diarrhoea amongst Guarani children, and killing fish and plants.

The Guarani state, ‘We can no longer find many of the medicines which used to grow in the forest… the plants have died because of the poison’.

They continue, ‘The growers never asked our permission or consulted us before planting on our land’.

Download the Guarani’s letter (pdf, 266 kb).

The Brazilian government’s failure to uphold its own laws and map out and protect the Guarani’s land for their exclusive use has left it vulnerable to exploitation by sugarcane plantations.

Meanwhile, many Guarani live in appalling conditions, in overcrowded reserves or camped on roadsides.

Dozens of Guarani have been assassinated after trying to reoccupy their ancestral land, and many more subjected to violence. The Guarani of Pueblito Kuê are the latest to suffer attacks, since they reoccupied their land last month.

Survival’s Director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘It’s a sad irony that people buy Shell’s ethanol as an ‘ethical’ alternative to fossil fuels: there’s certainly nothing ethical about its horrendous treatment of the Guarani. The Brazilian government needs to enforce its laws, and stop the wholesale destruction of the Indians’ land’.

Download Survival’s report to the UN, about the Guarani’s desperate situation (pdf, 2.4 MB)

The current boom in sugarcane production is taking over the Guarani’s ancestral land.
© S. Shenker/Survival

SOURCE ARTICLE

The settlement was reached after Harris County accused Shell Chemical, a unit of Royal Dutch Shell PLC, of failing to notify officials about the toxic releases

HOUSTON September 6, 2011 (AP)

Shell Chemical LP has agreed to pay $500,000 to a Texas County over five different air pollution events at its Deer Park refinery.

The settlement was reached after Harris County accused Shell Chemical, a unit of Royal Dutch Shell PLC, of failing to notify officials about the toxic releases. There are two schools and many homes close to the Shell refinery in Deer Park, about 18 miles southeast of Houston.

Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan says he is pleased Shell agreed under the terms of the agreement to notify officials within 24 hours of any chemical releases. The law already requires petrochemical companies to notify the county, but Shell apparently failed to do so in five events between 2008 and 2010.

Shell Chemical representatives were not immediately available for comment.

SOURCE ARTICLE

STV News has been shown footage many platforms are severely corroded and have exceeded their intended lifespan by up to 20 years.

“All we’re waiting for is a fat hot spark to coincide with the next loss of containment and we’re away into a multi-fatality event, serious damage to the assets and probably huge environmental losses.”

05 September 2011 15:50 BST

Link to stv news report featuring comments by Bill Campbell: http://bcove.me/0u7ostns

STV News has been given footage which shows how close some North Sea platforms are to collapse.

It comes amid growing concerns raised by the Health and Safety executive that many companies are not maintaining the installations – most of which are now working decades beyond their intended lifespan.

Shell’s oil leak two weeks ago was described as substantial. Over 200 tonnes of oil spilled out into the North Sea. That leak may have been plugged but it has raised the question of how long it is before we do face disaster.

An offshore worker filmed pictures showing how corroded his platform has become through ageing. A few taps with a hammer and the gratings, hundreds of feet above the North Sea, fall away.

Fifty per cent of the oil and gas platforms off Aberdeen have exceeded their original lifespan, some by more than 20 years – a number which is increasing.

A rise in incidents due to maintenance failures has led the Health and Safety Executive to conclude there is now a high risk of a major incident.

Bill Campbell, a former auditor at Shell who helped conduct the investigation into the Brent Bravo accident in 2003 which killed two men, now campaigns for better offshore maintenance.

He said: “All we’re waiting for is a fat hot spark to coincide with the next loss of containment and we’re away into a multi-fatality event, serious damage to the assets and probably huge environmental losses.

It’s a very fickle thing: it could happen tomorrow, it may never happen again, but to operate with the potential of that is illegal, because we’re supposed to be operating post-Cullen with the risks as low as reasonably practical.”

In the past year alone there have been 432 dangerous occurrences offshore. In January Premier Oil’s Balmoral platform had two improvement notices served after the release of hydrocarbon gases.

The following month BP was served a notice for an equipment failure which caused the escape of boiling heating fluid.

In May two gas leaks were reported on the Brent Charlie platform and two months later a serious problem was detected with its concrete legs. It has since been shut down.

SOURCE ARTICLE

SEPTEMBER 6, 2011

ABERDEEN, Scotland (Dow Jones)–There is still no clear explanation for what caused an oil leak at a Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA) North Sea platform that took more than a week to stanch, U.K. Department of Energy and Climate Change Minister Charles Hendry said Tuesday.

“We don’t yet understand is the full background to what happened with Gannet Alpha,” said Hendry, speaking at an industry conference here.

An investigation into the spill by is currently underway. Some 218 metric tons of oil spilled into the ocean for ten days from Aug. 10 before Shell was able to close an underwater relief valve on a leaking subsea pipeline. Around 660 tons of oil still remains trapped in the pipeline while Shell analyzes how to safely remove it.

“What we need to do–what my department is doing–is making sure we get a full understanding of what happened, and so if there are lessons to be learned for the future it then we will do so,” said Hendry.

Shell could face hefty fines in the Scottish courts if it was found to be negligent. The findings of the DECC investigation will be referred to the Scottish public prosecutor, who will decide whether further action will be required.

-By Alexis Flynn, Dow Jones Newswires, +44 207842 9471, alexis.flynn@dowjones.com

SOURCE ARTICLE

TO – Alfred Donovan
alfred@shellnews.net
http://www.shellnews.net – http://royaldutchshellplc.com

We look forward to hearing from you, and much appreciate your website, a special and key resource.

We’d also be interested to learn which Canadian environmental groups have contacted you.

Christopher Ives,        MA, VP Technology    RESTCo Inc.
Tel 450-458-7974         Fax 450-458-1746        Cell 514-826-2312
48 Tarquin Crescent   Nepean, Ontario          K2H 8J8 Canada
chris@restco.ca                                                  www.restco.ca