Shell oil spill 'worst for ten years'

An oil leak in the North Sea is said to be the biggest threat to the area's water quality for more than ten years.

The government has said that the 1,300 barrels of oil spilled into the sea by Royal Dutch Shell is the most substantial since 2000.

A fault in the pipeline linking the Gannet field and a platform was discovered last week and Shell has been working to stem the flow of oil into the sea ever since.

"It isn't easy to quantify the total volume spilled but we estimate so far that it is around 216 tons," commented Shell's technical director of exploration and production activities in Europe Glen Cayley.

Although it is not on the same huge scale as the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, the Department of Energy and Climate Change has said it is still a sizeable incident for the UK.

Shell could also be facing hefty fines for a spill it was involved with in Africa.

Posted by Lauren Steadman