Environment Report 2014

ENVIRONMENT REPORT 2014

In 2013, over 90 per cent of the drilling chemicals and over 90 per cent of the pipeline chemicals discharged by the UK offshore oil and gas industry were on the PLONOR list. The top ten drilling chemical discharges by volume were all PLONOR substances and the majority of discharges were brine. Through the HMCS, some chemicals used offshore are assigned a ‘SUB’ or ‘substitution warning’, which means a reliable value cannot be calculated to indicate whether the chemical might bioaccumulate. In 2013, only five per cent of all chemical discharges contained a ‘substitution warning’ and operators are encouraged to select alternative products. In some cases, however, there may be justified technical reasons from the supplier as to why a particular substance cannot be immediately substituted. Efforts to replace ‘SUB’ chemicals have resulted in a 90 per cent reduction in such discharges since 2003 11 .

Figure 5: Composition of Chemical Discharges from the UK Continental Shelf in 2013*

140,000

120,000

100,000

Pipeline Other Pipeline SUB

Pipeline PLONOR Production Other Production SUB Production PLONOR Drilling Other Drilling SUB Drilling PLONOR

80,000

60,000

Tonnes

40,000

20,000

0

Source: EEMS June 2014

2013

* ‘Pipeline, Production and Drilling Other‘ refers to chemicals used and discharged offshore not classified as PLONOR and without a substitution warning.

11 The OSPAR Quality Status Report 2010 is available to download at http://qsr2010.ospar.org/en/index.html

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