News / BP cleared of pollution charge
OIL giant BP was cleared of causing pollution by breaching environmental regulations at Shetland’s Sullom Voe oil terminal yesterday (Thursday).
The company was in the dock after denying that they were responsible for oily water spilling out of a tank during heavy rainfall on 7 October, 2008.
The terminal has a drainage system for separating oil from water so that it can be released into the sea, which includes a series of seven tanks and a series of filters.
Some water is stored in a clean water tank which is used to clean the filters, and on the day of the incident an air pressure valve into this tank failed, causing the tank to overflow.
At the same time a ‘high level alarm’ to warn about the overflow also failed after becoming blocked with sludge.
Under normal conditions the excess water would have simply flowed into one of the other tanks, but due to the heavy rain the water backed up the system and overflowed, leaking oily water into the surrounding environment.
Defence agent Craig Connal QC argued that these events could not reasonably have been predicted.
Michael Killeen, a chartered chemical engineer who was operations manager at the terminal and duty incident manager on the day of the incident, said he would not have expected the valve and the alarm to have failed at the same time.
“I remember the wind and rain bashing against the window. It was pretty horrendous in terms of the volume of rain, one of the worst times I’ve seen while at Sullom Voe,” Mr Killeen said.
Records showed just under 2,000 cubic metres of water flowed through the system on the day in question, twice as much as normal.
Sheriff Derek Livingston found the company not guilty of all wrong doing, saying the spill could not have been predicted.
After the court case, terminal manager Lyndsay Boswell said BP welcomed the verdict, which recognised the unusual circumstances that combined on the day of the spill.
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