Preventing oil spills

Spills from oil tankers are thankfully rare. Ships that we manage carried nearly 40 million tonnes of cargo in 2008. There were no oil spills from these Shell-managed ships, reflecting our strict operating requirements. There was however, one large spill when a single-hulled barge we did not manage that was on short-term hire to Shell was hit by another ship. It lost approximately 300 tonnes of diesel into the Elbe River in Germany. To prevent this kind of spill in the future, we have been phasing in the hiring of double-hull barges on all rivers in Europe since 2006. We aim to complete this programme by the beginning of 2011, seven years ahead of European requirements for hiring double-hulled barges.

Reducing spills we can control in our facilities requires clear procedures, consistent compliance and a lot of hard work. The number and volume of these operational spills, for example from corrosion or operational failures, have fallen since 1998. This trend continued in 2008 as our increased focus on process safety (see Personal and process safety) appeared to be paying off.

It is more difficult to reduce spills caused by sabotage, hurricanes or other things we cannot control. About half the total volume spilled in 2008 was caused by one sabotage incident in Nigeria, where a large pipeline was damaged by explosives. As a result of that incident, our spills from sabotage rose, pushing total spill volume higher. At sites in Nigeria that were shut down by the security situation, reliable information about spills will not be available until we can return to repair and restart operations.