Brent Spar - Timeline

Timeline

• 1976: Brent Spar built and enters service

• September 1991: Brent Spar ceases operations

• 1991–93: Shell examines options and carries out risk assessment and environmental impact assessment. Decides to sink Brent Spar at the North Feni Ridge.

• February 1994: Independent environmental consultancy, Aberdeen University Research and Industrial Services, endorses choice of deep sea disposal. Shell begins formal consultations with conservation bodies and fishing interests. Draft Abandonment Plan submitted.

• December 1994: UK government approves plans for sinking.

• April–May 1995: Greenpeace activists occupy platform to prevent sinking. Greenpeace International organizes boycott of Shell products and services.

• 30 April 1995: Greenpeace wrongly asserts that the Brent Spar still contains 5500 tonnes of crude oil.

• 5 May 1995: British Government grants disposal license to Shell UK.

• 9 May 1995: German Ministry of the Environment protests against disposal plan.

• 11 June 1995: Shell UK begins to tow Spar to deep Atlantic disposal site.

• 15 June 1995: German chancellor Helmut Kohl protests to British Prime Minister John Major at G7 summit.

• 14 June 1995 – 20 June 1995: Protesters in Germany threaten to damage 200 Shell service stations. 50 are subsequently damaged, two fire-bombed and one raked with bullets.

• 26 June 1995 – 30 June 1995: Eleven states call for a moratorium on sea disposal of decommissioned offshore installations at meeting of Oslo and Paris Commissions. Opposed by Britain and Norway.

• 7 July 1995: Norway grants permission to moor Spar in Erfjord while Shell reconsiders options.

• 12 July 1995: Shell UK commissions independent Norwegian consultancy Det Norske Veritas (DNV) to conduct an audit of Spar's contents and investigate Greenpeace allegations.

• 5 September 1995: Greenpeace admits inaccurate claims that Spar contains 5,550 tonnes of oil and apologizes to Shell.

• 18 October 1995 - DNV present results of their audit, endorsing the original Spar inventory. DNV state that the amount of oil claimed by Greenpeace to be in the Spar was "grossly overestimated".

• 29 January 1998: Shell announces Brent Spar will be disposed of on shore and used as foundations for a new ferry terminal.

• 23 July 1998: OSPAR member states announce agreement on onshore disposal of oil facilities in the future.

• February 1999: BBC 9 O'Clock News screens interview with Conservative former environment minister John Selwyn-Gummer in which he accuses Greenpeace campaigners of telling lies and, as a result, causing damage to the whole environmental movement.

• 10 July 1999: Decommissioning is completed and the first stages of constructing the ferry terminal are started.

• 25 November 1999: BBC formally apologizes to Greenpeace over screening of Gummer allegations.