UK facing EU outrage over 'timebomb' of North Sea oil rigs

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

UK facing EU outrage over ‘timebomb’ of North Sea oil rigs

Germany leads complaint against plan to leave polluted remains of Shell rigs in place

Philip Oltermann in Berlin and Jillian Ambrose
Wed 4 Sep 2019 05.00 BSTLast modified on Wed 4 Sep 2019 17.20 BST

The British government is facing growing outrage from the European commission and five EU member states over its plans to leave some decommissioned oil rigs in the North Sea, with one senior German official describing the UK’s proposal as a “grotesque idea” that amounts to a “ticking timebomb”.

Several hundred oil drilling platforms in the North Sea are due to be decommissioned over the next three decades as they approach the end of their operational lifetime.

Disassembling the enormous pieces of infrastructure, each of which can be as tall as the Eiffel Tower, is a costly undertaking, and this year the UK government is intending to endorse plans by Shell to leave behind one steel jacket and the concrete bases beneath three of the platforms of its Brent oilfield installation.

The plans have raised alarm in Germany over the estimated 11,000 tonnes of raw oil and toxins remaining in the base of the three Brent installations, Bravo, Charlie and Delta, all erected in the East Shetland basin in the 1970s.

Germany issued a formal complaint, now backed by Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. On 18 August the European commission wrote to Theresa Villiers, expressing serious concerns and reminding the UK environment secretary that the content of the rigs’ storage cells qualifies as hazardous waste, according to EU law.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/sep/04/uk-facing-eu-outrage-over-timebomb-of-north-sea-oil-rigs

[OAITW r.2.0]

1. true "pump and dump" scheme if there ever was one.

Blows my mind that the UK allowed this and didn't have decommissioning costs recovered in the revenue calculations at the time of construction.

[Firestorm49]

2. They sure as shit don't mind building them.

But when the final responsibility comes along, they run away with their tails between their legs.

This is outrageous. The oil robbers need to be held accountable from the first day to the eventual final disassembly. We see this crap all the time - from coal mines to battery factories, and on and on.

I hope the EU in total doesn’t cower to these grubs.