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To: Big Dog who wrote (71313)	8/22/2000 9:41:24 PM
From: Think4Yourself	Respond to of 95453

Big Dog, this might affect you. New rules ban dumping rigs at sea Source: The Scotsman Publication date: 2000-08-21 BRITAIN will today become the first European country to ban dumping oil and gas rigs at sea. New rules to be issued by the government in the wake of the Brent Spar controversy five years ago will seek to protect the marine environment by insisting that the vast bulk of off-shore installations should be returned to the UK for dismantling or recycling when they have reached the end of their working life. In future, oil and gas companies which want to cease operations in UK waters will be required to submit a detailed de-commissioning programme to the Department of Trade and Industry for approval. The move takes the matter out of private hands and makes the company accountable to the government. Ministers are expected to oppose leaving platforms in place above sea-level, but will have discretion to allow concrete foundations to remain under the water where these may be particularly difficult to remove. The Chancellor, Gordon Brown, is offering tax relief through capital allowances to encourage oil and gas operators to recycle dismantled installations and pipelines by making them available for re-use. Helen Liddell, the energy minister, hailed the package as offering important job opportunities which could keep the UK oil and gas industry going when reserves in the North Sea start to run down. "After 25 years of UK offshore oil production, hydrocarbons continue to flow from the UK continental shelf at record levels," she said on a visit to Stavanger in Norway for the annual Offshore North Sea conference, which opens today. "By the innovative use of new technology and flexible commercial arrangements, many fields are still in production which were forecast to have closed down long ago. "But there will come a stage when all our offshore oil and gas fields will reach the end of their economic life and in UK waters this must be managed responsibly." The introduction of guidance for de-commissioning follows two years of hard bargaining with the industry and green groups over the detailed terms of an international environmental convention banning the toppling or disposal of large structures at sea. Labour signed up to this in 1998 on the back of the party's promise to prevent any repetition of the environmental outcry that was provoked when Shell UK attempted to dump the redundant Brent Spar oil storage buoy at the bottom of the Atlantic. The company was forced to abandon its plans in 1995 after Greenpeace activists occupied the 14,500-tonne rig, then moored off Aberdeen, claiming that marine disposal would pollute the sea bed. Since then Shell UK has successfully cut up the 420-foot buoy and converted it into a quay for the Mekjarvik fjord on the Norwegian coast, near Stavanger. Now by publishing official guidance, the UK has become the first member of the Commission for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North East Atlantic to put an effective ban on sea dumping into place. However, the agreement does allow derogations to be granted in limited cases, for example if operators can demonstrate that it would be difficult to remove from the sea-bed the "footings" of large steel jackets weighing more than 10,000 tonnes. Mrs Liddell said the de-commissioning of offshore installations was inevitable and the government was determined to handle it in accordance with domestic legislation and international commitments. A DTI spokesman was unable to say which companies operating in the North Sea would be immediately affected by the new rules. Publication date: 2000-08-21 © 2000, YellowBrix, Inc.