After dumping gravel on the Ormen Lange field in the Norwegian Sea, Shell has lost large amounts of chain, steel and plastic buckets on the seabed. Now the Environment Agency (Miljødirektoratet) has required it to be cleaned up.
The price tag on the cleanup, according Offshore, will be around 65 million. According to Shell’s own estimates, the cost would be limited to 22 million if they had been allowed to cover the garbage with stone.
‘Covering it with rocks will not remove the risk from the waste and fragments of microplastic over a duration of time. The Environment Directorate therefore imposes a requirement that Norwegian Shell remove the waste by December 2018’, wrote the Environment Agency in a letter to Norwegian Shell.
Shell informed Sysla Offshore that they are not going to appeal the decision.
During stone dumping in 2007, 2012 and 2013, Shell dropped the waste that now needs to be cleared up. Among items in the cleanup, will be 940 large plastic buckets, 50 steel buckets and 90.5 tons of steel.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today
