north sea

Ten days after the leak began, Total is still struggling to contain the gas pouring from its North Sea Elgin platform, citing bad weather as the cause of the delays. Yet, in just 100 days’ time, Shell wants to start drilling for oil in the remote and extreme Arctic environment – claiming it has the technology and the tools to deal with any spill.

Here are six reasons why an oil spill in the Arctic would be so much harder to deal with than a gas leak in the North Sea, and so much more catastrophic:

Another week, another push for reckless oil drilling by a UK company. This time it's BP, which wants to drill its deepest ever well in UK waters - a 1300 metre well - off the coast of North Uist.

Thanks to all those who attended Shell’s web chat yesterday.

We were there too and thought the chat did little to dispel the company’s growing reputation as a walking PR disaster. Whilst Shell boasted of having responded to over 80 questions, unfortunately their answers bore little relation to the questions being asked.

This was an hour long master class in obfuscation and evasion.

Shell has apologised for the North Sea oil spill and for its own lack of transparency saying: "The fact is something has gone wrong here, so whatever risk assessment we made about the condition of these pipes has proven to be wrong."

As global oil reserves run low, the oil giants are looking further and further afield in search of new oil. From the Arctic to the extreme deep waters of New Zealand, the oil drillers are preparing to take greater and greater risks in the search for the last drops of oil - but they've got a fight on their hands.

What does the ongoing North Sea oil spill say about Shell's plans to open up the Arctic, where an accident would be all but impossible to clean up? Especially now the existence of a suspected second leak at its Gannett Alpha platform has been revealed?

As I write, Shell is working to contain an oil spill off the Aberdeenshire coast that is already, reportedly, the worst spill in UK waters for over a decade.