Letters / Flabberghasted
In reply to Allen Fraser (Our next environmental disaster; SN 6/1/13):
I am absolutely flabberghasted that Allen has managed to come up with the idea that the next environmental disaster on the scale of the Braer is Viking Energy.
The following is why:
1) Two tankers a week currently run in and out of Yell Sound. Imagine if one of them suffered a power failure on their way out. Full of oil. The devastation would be incalculable.
2) Total Oil and Gas are currently laying hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete into their new site (no sign of him crying wolf there).
3) The Clair field and platform lie only 24 miles west of Shetland. If a major well failure was to occur we would be directly in the firing line.
4) There are currently 20 oil rigs to the east of us, starting from 50 miles onwards…again, any major oil release and we are in the heart of it.
5) A flurry of deep water drilling much like the Deepwater Horizon, which caused unbelievable damage to the Gulf coast in America, is currently ongoing 24 hours a day west of Shetland.
6) The Fair Isle channel still remains one of the busiest shipping routes in the world. The danger has not been removed.
7) Finally I suggest Allen contacts our good friends in Orkney, on the island of Hoy especially, where he will find (no doubt he already knows) hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete buried under ground.
During World War Too the army created underground oil storage tanks to hold up to 100,000 tons of oil.
As far as I’m aware, 70 to 80 years on, Hoy has not suffered a Braer like disaster due to this concrete.
Craig Johnson
Northmavine
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