More than a hundred oil spills occur every year around our coasts according to a government agency, the Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment and Decommissioning.

Poole Harbour in Dorset is an SSSI that is internationally recognised for its ecological importance and wild seabird populations. It made the news last year when a corroded pipeline from Wytch Farm, the UK’s largest onshore oil field, spilled six tonnes of oil into a marine nature reserve.

Most spills receive little or no attention in the media, as they occur on offshore platforms far out to sea. A large spill occurred in 2020, when a contractor for BP, Altera Infrastructure, released over 200 tonnes of diesel from a damaged drilling vessel in the Faroe-Shetland Sponge Belt Marine Protected Area.

In the last ten years, 551 spills occurred in conservation areas protected for vulnerable species and habitats. The highest number of spills within a protected area – 67 in ten years – occurred in a field operated by Shell within a Special Area of Conservation designated for the protection of harbour porpoises.

Yet one in every three of the new oil and gas licences granted in July by the Conservative government sits in or near a Marine Protected Area. The Wildlife Trusts fear that Marine Protected Areas risk becoming ‘paper parks’ protected in name only.

Fish, sea birds, whales and dolphins ingest the toxic oil, fatally damaging their livers and kidneys. Even exposure to toxic oil fumes was found to kill whales and dolphins in research by the University of St Andrews. Toxins are passed up the food chain by shellfish that accumulate the chemicals in their bodies.

The company responsible for the pipeline leak in Poole Harbour, Perenco, owns 363 offshore wells and has repeatedly missed decommissioning dates for plugging up its old wells by as much as a decade. Unplugged wells leak oil and toxic chemicals into surrounding waters and release tonnes of methane into the atmosphere.

As oil and gas reserves are depleted over the next decade, 2,100 wells will need to be plugged at a cost of around £8 million per well according to the North Sea Transition Authority. There is a real concern that some operators will quit the UK or go out of business, with taxpayers forced to pick up the bill.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero already has the power to issue fines and refer operators for criminal prosecution. To date, Perenco has not been fined for the Dorset oil spill or its uncapped wells. Altera was fined £25,000 for its 2020 spill, and BP received a derisory £7,000 fine for a large oil spill of 105 tonnes in 2016.

With a spill recorded every couple of days, oil and gas developments are damaging our seas and their fragile ecosystems. As with the water companies, this is a failure of government and its regulator, the Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment and Decommissioning (Opred). Fines

need to be proportionate to the costs of cleaning up pollution, and Marine Protected Areas must be protected from new developments.