• Blackpool earthquake: the Richter scale explained 01 Apr 2011
• Blackpool earthquake: seismic activity in Britain 01 Apr 2011
• Earthquake shakes north-west of England 01 Apr 2011

£8,000,000 UBS AG
For systems and controls failures that enabled employees to carry out unauthorised transactions involving customer money on 39 accounts

£7,700,000 Barclays Bank plc
For failures in relation to the sale of two funds

£7,000,000 Toronto Dominion Bank
For repeated systems and controls failings around the pricing of sophisticated financial products

£7,000,000 Alliance & Leicester Plc
For serious failings in its telephone sales of payment protection insurance

£6,895,000 Willis Limited
For failings in its anti-bribery and corruption systems and controls.

FULL ARTICLE

By Robin Yapp, in Sao Paulo 7:07PM BST 21 Sep 2011

Shell finally managed to seal its leaking pipeline on Friday after a week-long battle to stop the flow. It said yesterday that further monitoring of the well shows that no more oil is leaking into the ocean and the sheen on the surface has now naturally dispersed.

At 1,500 barrels, it is still a tiny fraction of BP’s 4m barrel Gulf of Mexico oil spill. However, it is still the worst environmental lapse in the North Sea for a decade and now that the flow has stopped, Shell will be facing tough questions from regulators.

The oil giant has suffered a series of problems on its North Sea installations this year, in particular on the Brent field.

Since January, the company has seen the death of a maintenance worker, a series of gas “kicks”, equipment collapsing off a platform into the sea and a 15,000-hour backlog of repairs.

All four of the Brent field’s platforms – Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta – stopped producing oil and gas in January after a chunk of protective railing plunged into the ocean as a result of “metal fatigue”.

Production at Bravo and Alpha only restarted this month, with Delta shortly to follow. However, the Charlie platform remains closed after a rare “prohibition notice” following a series of gas leaks.

The Health and Safety Executive recently warned that only one in 20 of Britain’s North Sea oil platforms was in good condition and expressed concern that companies were neglecting workers’ safety.

More than 96pc of installations in the North Sea were found to require improvements during inspections over the past three years, with one in five showing “major failings”.

Shell has been under pressure to release pipeline inspection reports for the infrastructure where the leak was found.

However, it is understood that the company does not think it appropriate to make these documents public while official investigations are ongoing.

Glen Cayley, Shell’s technical director in Europe, said: “We care about the environment and we regret that the spill has happened. We have taken it very seriously and responded promptly to it.”

Shell has spent $1.2bn (£730m) on upgrading assets in the North Sea since 2004 and this year will pump a further $600m into the region.

SOURCE ARTICLE

Divers switched off a valve from which just one barrel per day was trickling over the last couple of days, but in total around 1,600 barrels has made its way into the ocean over the course of the spill.

Shell’s work is not over as it will have to remove oil trapped in the pipeline between the sealed off well and the platform. The Marine Coastguard’s latest estimate is that the sheen currently covers an area of 6.7 square kms and 26 barrels by volume.

“Closing the valve is a key step,” said Glen Cayley, technical director of Shell in Europe. “ It was a careful and complex operation conducted by skilled divers, with support from our technical teams onshore. But we will be watching the line closely over the next 24 hours and beyond.”

Hugh Shaw, the Government’s representative for maritime salvage and intervention, said he would closely monitor the progress of the operation.

“Shell informed me at 10.58 this morning that both valves have been closed by divers, though I must be clear that this is not the end of this particular phase of the operation as there will now be a period of extensive monitoring to determine whether the operation has been successful and whether the leak has been stemmed,” he said. “This will be done through subsea surveillance as well as by aerial surveillance by Government aircraft.”

The Government said last night it will make recommendations to the Scottish Procurator Fiscal about whether to prosecute Shell, as its inspectors began to investigate what went wrong on the Gannet Alpha platform’s pipeline.

Hugh Shaw, the Government’s representative for maritime salvage and intervention, said he believed the leak was now “under control”, though it is still leaking around one barrel per day into the sea.

He became involved in the operation on Friday night, three days after the leak started, when it became clear there was “potential for significant pollution”.

Officials have now set up an operations control unit in the North Sea with Government advisers and technical experts, as Shell battles to seal the off the leak once and for all.

Shell’s costs are continuing to mount as it is still working with underwater robots and surveillance flights to monitor the leak, which is thought to have spilt around 1,300 barrels into the sea.

Yes, it’s tiny when compared to Exxon Valdez or BP’s Gulf of Mexico disaster, but the Gannet oil field spill still ranks as Britain’s worst oil spill for over a decade.

More importantly, as my colleague Rowena Mason reports on B5, the spill has highlighted the increasing difficulties facing Shell (and other explorers) when trying to pump oil and gas out of the North Sea.

Even before the Gannet leak it had been a challenging a year in the North Sea for Shell. All four of its Brent platforms stopped producing for eight months, when part of one fell into the sea in January.

The problems didn’t stop there. Following a series of gas leaks the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) forced Shell to close one of its largest North Sea platforms. It is not expected to come back on stream until next year.

This year has also witnessed the first death on one of Shell’s North Sea installations for five years, when an abseiler plunged to his death.