Massive Gas Leak Could Be the North Sea's Deepwater Horizon

A natural gas well in the North Sea 150 miles off Aberdeen, Scotland, sprung a massive methane leak on March 25. The 238 workers were all safely evacuated. But the situation is so explosive that an exclusion zone for ships and aircraft has been set up around the rig, reports the Mail Online. And nearby rigs have been evacuated, reports the New York Times:

    Royal Dutch Shell said it closed its Shearwater field, about four miles away, withdrawing 52 of the 90 workers there; it also suspended work and evacuated 68 workers from a drilling rig working nearby, the Hans Deul.

But that's not the worst of it. The platform lies less than 100 yards/meters from a flare that workers left burning as crew evacuated. The French super-major oil company owner of the rig, Total, dismissed the risk, while the British government claimed the flame needs to burn to prevent gas pressure from building up. But Reuters reports:

    [O]ne energy industry consultant said Elgin could become "an explosion waiting to happen" if the oil major did not rapidly stop the leak which is above the water at the wellhead.

Shock as retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas

Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.

The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.

In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed.

"Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It's amazing," Dr Semiletov said. "I was most impressed by the sheer scale and high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them."

Criticism Grows Over Shell's Handling of Oil Leak

LONDON — Pressure mounted Tuesday on Royal Dutch Shell to explain how 1,300 barrels of oil could have leaked from a pipeline into the North Sea, after the spill, which was discovered last week, tarnished a widely praised record for avoiding such incidents in Britain. 

Shell said it was still working on finding the source of a smaller leak from the same part of the pipeline that connects a well with the Gannet Alpha platform about 122 miles, or 196 kilometers, east of the Scottish city of Aberdeen. About one barrel a day was still leaking into the sea, Shell said.

The British Department of Energy and Climate Change said the spill had been “substantial” in the context of the U.K. Continental shelf, even though it was small in comparison to that caused by an explosion of a well in the Gulf of Mexico last year. Glen Cayley, Shell’s technical director in Britain, also said that it was a “significant spill in the context of annual amounts of oil spilled in the North Sea.”

North Sea Oil Spill: Shell Struggles To Shut Down Second Leak

LONDON -- Royal Dutch Shell has shut down the main leak at one of its North Sea oil rigs but said Tuesday it is struggling to stop a secondary spill in a hard-to-reach part of the ocean floor.

The company has stemmed the main leak in the flow line to the Gannet Alpha platform by closing the well and isolating the reservoir, said Glen Cayley, technical director of Shell's European exploration and production activities. The second, smaller leak has proved more elusive to control.

"The residual small leak is in an awkward position to get to," he said. "This is complex sub-sea infrastructure, and really getting into it amongst quite dense marine growth is proving a challenge.

"It's taken our diving crews some time to establish exactly and precisely where that leak is coming from."

The secondary spill is pumping about two barrels – or 84 gallons – into the cold water each day. The company estimated Monday that 54,600 gallons of oil had spilled into the North Sea from the rig off Scotland's eastern coast.

North Sea Spill: U.K. Says Hundreds Of Tons Of Oil May Have Leaked

LONDON -- The British government warned Monday that several hundred tons of oil may have leaked into the North Sea from a Royal Dutch Shell rig.

The Department for Energy and Climate Change said it estimates that the leak from a flow line at the Gannet Alpha platform off the Scottish coast that began last week could have spilled several hundred tons of oil into the sea.

It said the leak was small compared to the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year, but said it was still substantial for the U.K.'s continental shelf. The government said the oil would disperse naturally and was not expected to reach the shore.