Oil Pollution in the North Sea

This book presents a review of knowledge on oil pollution in the North Sea. Making use of a range of data from satellite imagery, remote-sensing, aerial surveillance, in situ monitoring, oil spill sampling and beached bird surveys, it presents a picture of trends in oil pollution in the region over many years. It examines national practices in a number of North Sea states, the impact the North Sea being given Special Status for oil under the MARPOL Convention and the activities of the Bonn Agreement, OSPAR Commission and EMSA CleanSeaNet in monitoring the region. It also examines the development of a common method for oil spill identification by the Bonn-Oil Spill Identification Network and the use of sensors to identify spills in the German North Sea. The use of beached bird surveys in North Sea and in Dutch waters also provides a tool for monitoring chronic oil pollution in coastal waters. The publication brings together the work of scientists, legal and policy experts, academic researchers and specialists in various fields relating to marine environmental protection, oil pollution and the North Sea.

Preventing maritime disasters is very important. Accidental or illegal pollution from ships is a threat to the maritime environment. The Greater North Sea and its wider approaches are one of the busiest and intensively used maritime areas in the world. With the ever‐increasing competition for space comes an increased risk of accidents that could result in marine pollution; the Bonn Agreement contracting parties decided to establish the BE‐AWARE project to undertake the first area‐wide risk assessment of marine pollution using a common methodology that allows the risk to be mapped and compared under different scenarios. Under the International Convention on Marine Pollution from Ships (MARPOL 73/78), the whole of the North Sea area is a ‘special area’ for oil discharges; any oily discharge that is visible as a sheen on the water is illegal. The number of oil slicks detected shows that there is still work to do to bring to justice the offenders responsible for those slicks. The North Sea Network of Investigators and Prosecutors and the Bonn Agreement work together on enforcement. The contracting parties have also undertaken to conduct surveillance of the area as an aid to detecting and combating pollution and to preventing violation of anti-pollution regulations, known as MARPOL. Satellite surveillance also plays an (still growing) important role in the detection of possible pollution at sea. The contracting parties have developed an Aerial Operations Handbook (AOH).

Principles and standards corresponding to the prevention and control of vessel-source marine pollution are one of the most amply regulated areas of public international law. Vessel-source pollution, or in more restricted terms illegal oil pollution from ships, is not a new phenomenon. Although there seems to exist far-reaching regulations governing compensation for natural resource injury consequential to an oil spill, the European Union (EU) has apparently advanced a rather controversial position on this subject. International Maritime Organization (IMO) acknowledges the rights of victims of illegal oil pollution and has marked out specific maritime zones of the world that are in need of special attention. The North Sea, as such, falls within the territory of respective states of the EU. Major maritime incidents including illegal discharges of oil by Flag States in the pristine waters of the North Sea have led EU to believe that injury to natural resources per se and their economic valuation as laid down by IMO is more contentious then the current reality. Hence, the Special Status Areas (SSA) of the North Sea are under the disarray influence of legal contradiction. The assessment of injury to natural resources embraces complex questions surrounding both the assessment of injury to natural resources and then the award of appropriate compensatory damages. To what length can IMO assess this damage and prescribe a successful indemnification through the tools of civil liability and compensation regime for a region that has always adopted unilateral measures has left a question mark on the role of IMO. This endeavors to discuss the role of IMO in terms of the North Sea SSA and seeks to examine both the civil liability and criminal liability regimes for injury to natural resources consequential to an illegal oil discharge under both international law and the EU regional law. In essence, the article investigates the adequacy of the international system in compensating for natural resource injury and compares this to the corresponding, more compensatory, EU Directive approach.

This chapter deals with cooperation, organization, responsibility, statistics, preventive measures, equipment, etc. in relation to maintaining a clean marine environment in the Danish sector of the North Sea including the coast and harbours. In addition to international conventions, national legislation regulates responsibilities and organization with regard to aerial surveillance and oil spill response. Through multilateral agreements such as the Bonn Agreement, cooperation takes place with other North Sea countries with regard to aerial surveillance, oil spill response, operations, exercises, etc. Besides this international cooperation, there are a range of national collaborations between a number of national authorities and units which also takes place, not only in relation to ships but in relation to oil rigs as well, with an additional set of rules drawn up for the latter. Implementing preventive measures on the marine environment are also discussed in this chapter, together with measures such as vessel traffic zones which have yet to be established in the busiest maritime areas in the Danish part of the North Sea. The section on aerial surveillance and oil pollution statistics examines the numbers of incidents and numbers of oil slicks from ships and platforms. A steady decrease in mineral oil spills from ships has occurred over the last 10 years. During that period only one event requiring action to combat an oil spill has taken place in the Danish sector of the North Sea.

Although the waters of Belgium only form a minor part of the North Sea, they contain some of the busiest shipping routes in the world with the Dover Strait and some of the biggest European ports in the immediate vicinity. It is therefore recognized as a key maritime risk area, also in terms of ship-source oil pollution. This chapter first discusses the significant, stepwise decrease of illegal oil discharges from ships in and around the waters of Belgium based on national aerial surveillance data since 1991 but also gives indications as to why the ecological quality objectives have not yet been met despite this decline. It further gives an overview of the accidental oil pollution incidents in this key risk area over the last 30 years and reflects on the high level of accidental marine pollution risk. Finally, the various measures are discussed that have been and will be undertaken in terms of oil pollution prevention, enforcement, preparedness and response with the aim to (further) reduce the oil pollution pressure in this environmentally sensitive area.

Oil pollution is a serious issue in the Netherlands ever since merchant and military vessels with diesel engines gradually replaced vessels operating sails and steam engines in the early twentieth century. Arguably, the southern North Sea became one of the most heavily oil-polluted sea areas in the world as a result of chronic oil pollution. Major shipping incidents resulting in massive oil spills have, however, been rather rare within the area. In the early twenty-first century, the number of detected oil spills has markedly declined and levels of chronic oil pollution are currently rather low. Most detections of oil slicks are still concentrated around the major shipping lanes and off major ports such as Rotterdam and IJmuiden (leading to Amsterdam).

Oil pollution in the United Kingdom (UK) waters of the North Sea primarily emanates from shipping activities and offshore oil production. Increased commercialisation of the shipping industry fills up the quota of oil pollution that is not resulting from oil exploration by offshore installations. The North Sea is a relatively small yet intensively used area, and it contains some of the most active and engaged shipping channels in the world. The result of such active engagement has left devastating consequences in the English Channel, which have sporadically occurred in the form of maritime casualties. This chapter is an effort to understand UK legislation, which has pragmatic approaches to addressing immediate responses as regards to oil pollution applicable to the areas adjacent to the North Sea. “Intervention” is a term often used when it comes to instantaneous action to limit or mitigate oil pollution which may have profound effects on the waters of the world. The need to develop close international cooperation is important and the existing legal regime is in great need of revision. As such and from a more private law approach, arrangements for monitoring and remedial action in the wake of an oil spill are addressed. The UK is just one of several states bordering the North Sea trying to make a difference in addressing oil spill and oil pollution through strict liability regimes. This delineates the disposition of the UK to address a complex problem of oil pollution in the North Sea, which is sensitive in nature. The degree of success is in further need of analysis.

Operational oil pollution surveillance has been performed in Germany for almost 30 years. Sophisticated state-of-the-art sensors are being used for frequent airborne surveillance, while satellite data are used as prewarning and additional information input on a routine basis. In parallel, basic research on the imaging of marine oil pollution by synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has been performed, and a basic understanding of the imaging of biogenic and anthropogenic marine surface films by active microwave sensors has been developed. In this paper, we provide an overview of the current operational surveillance system, and we give some historical background summarising some of the results of the research conducted during the past decades. Within this chapter, example images from pollution events are given for several sensors. The German coast’s spatial and temporal vulnerability to oil pollution is quantified, and the use of dispersants in a highly vulnerable ecosystem such as the “Wadden Sea” is discussed.

Seabirds are particularly sensitive to marine oil pollution. Systematic surveys of beach-cast corpses of birds (‘beached bird surveys’) not only document the adverse effects of oil pollution on wild birds but are particularly useful for monitoring spatial and temporal patterns and trends in chronic oil pollution. In this chapter, we briefly review the history and current schemes of beached bird surveys around the North Sea and the development and sensitivity of the monitoring instrument, followed by an overview of the most recent developments and trends. Oil pollution at sea has been known since the late nineteenth century, and the first beached bird surveys were conducted in the 1920s. Oil rates (the proportion of seabirds found on the tideline that were oiled) remained very high until the late 1980s, but have since declined markedly. Protocols were modified in the late 1990s in order to obtain an internationally accepted monitoring instrument. The subsequent continuation of the declining trends in oil rates around the North Sea is discussed. The species composition of the seabirds most commonly found oiled suggests that coastal areas are currently more or less free from chronic oil pollution, while higher pollution levels occur around shipping lanes in areas with the highest shipping densities.

Oil and gas installations are a source of oil inputs to the North Sea. Those inputs can include oil discharge as a result of production processes or from accidental spills. Two bodies play a major role in monitoring oil inputs from those installations. The OSPAR Commission is responsible for monitoring oil and gas installations against various performance standards, collects samples from those installations to determine whether those standards have been met or exceeded, and also monitors accidental spills. The Bonn Agreement Secretariat also plays a role through its aerial surveillance and, more recently, satellite monitoring activities in the North Sea region. Once a spill has been identified and confirmed as being mineral oil rather than other types of oils or even algae or a natural event, the Bonn Agreement seeks to identify the source of that oil. Through a programme of surveillance activities, it also specifically monitors the areas around oil and gas fields. This chapter provides an overview of the activities of the OSPAR Commission and Bonn Secretariat as they relate to oil and gas installations and examines data on inputs of oil to the marine environment to identify trends in oil pollution from those installations.

This contribution describes the development and some highlights of the internationally agreed standard procedure CEN/TR 15522–2:2012: “Oil spill identification – Waterborne petroleum and petroleum products – Part 2: Analytical methodology and interpretation of results based on GC-FID and GC-MS low resolution analyses” [1]. In particular, handling of changes caused by weathering of spilled oil is described here: PW plots (partial weathering plots) allow a proper and unequivocal identification of oil, despite those changes. CEN/TR 15522–2:2012 has been produced by Bonn-OSINet (Oil Spill Identification Network of experts within the Bonn Agreement). Researchers from all over the world have cooperated and contributed to its development. This method has been continuously improved and tested over the last decade. Cooperation of laboratories culminated in COSIweb (Computerized Oil Spill Identification), an online program which includes a huge database of more than 2,200 oil samples at the time of writing and an automatic evaluation system. This web-based resource provides the possibility to handle raw data produced anywhere in the world and to evaluate these data as if they were produced in a user’s own laboratory.

The scope of the OSPAR Commission includes monitoring input of pollutants from sea, land and atmospheric sources entering the North Sea and wider North-East Atlantic. The OSPAR Commission is responsible for implementing the requirements of the OSPAR Convention on the protection of the marine environment of the North-East Atlantic. As part of its activities, the Commission published the results of those monitoring activities in Quality Status Reports in 2000 and 2010. Those reports set out the state of the environment in the OSPAR maritime area as a whole and its regional areas such as the North Sea. Data on oil inputs from the offshore oil and gas industry and from shipping that enters the North Sea is generally available, but less so for the broader OSPAR maritime area. Data on the impact of oil inputs on the marine environment has much more limited availability. This chapter provides an overview of the development of the OSPAR Convention and Commission and examines the findings of the Quality Status Reports, both for the wider OSPAR maritime area and the North Sea more specifically.

This chapter examined Bonn Agreement annual statistics from aerial surveillance activities between 1986 and 2010 and examines the levels of flight hours for observed and confirmed oil spills in the North Sea. It also looks at the results of EMSA CleanSeaNet satellite imagery for the region between 2007 and 2011 for observed and confirmed spills. In terms of observed spills, there has been a significant decline in the numbers of spills and volume of oil entering the marine environment over more than two decades. This is also the case for discharges from oil and gas installations, where OSPAR Commission monitoring data identifies a very large fall in operational discharges from installations over the last decade in particular. The decadal OSPAR Quality Status Reports have also identified improvements in the region while identifying areas for further action in reducing oil inputs still further, especially from ageing oil and gas infrastructure. Projects such as Bonn Agreement BE-AWARE have mapped and identified the risk of oil pollution across the region, while Bonn-OSINet and COSIweb have resulted in improved methods to not only identify the make-up of an oil spill but also to increase the likelihood of matching samples from a spill to samples from potential sources. Beached bird surveys also provide a tool in monitoring not only the impacts of large spills from accidents but also levels of chronic oil pollution in coastal and offshore areas. The results of investigations into oil pollution in the waters of Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany are discussed, while an examination of the legal structure for monitoring and dealing with oil pollution in UK waters is presented. Legislative measures such as the MARPOL Convention, EU Directive on Port Reception Facilities and national legislation have contributed to a reduction in oil being discharged through operational activities from ships, while accidental spills have also been reduced as a result of better vessel standards and improved traffic management in the southern and eastern North Sea. While illegal discharges continue to present a problem and there remains a need to reduce pollution in offshore areas, it is clear that there has been a significant improvement in the state of the North Sea in terms of oil over several decades.