Cambo Oil Field’s Destruction Of Our Sea Life
The Oil industry has been polluting and destroying marine wildlife and habitat for decades – and the Cambo Oil Field Project seems to be Scotland’s tipping point…
So, what is the Cambo Oil Field?
The Cambo Oil Field was discovered in 2002 and is located off the coast of the Shetland Isle, at the top of Scotland. It is one of the deepest fields to be discovered in Northern Europe. The field is jointly owned by Siccar Point Energy (70%) and Shell UK (30%). The Cambo Oil Field could jeopardise (put at risk) hundreds of species and contribute to the ongoing climate crisis. Environmentalists (people who care deeply for the environment) said pipelines would cut through about 22 miles of the Faroe-Shetland Sponge Belt, a UK Marine Protected Area. The Cambo Oil Field Project is thought to contain a huge amount of barrels of oil (approximately 800 million). The field is situated approximately 75 miles to the west of Shetland Islands in water depths of between 3445 ft and 3609 ft.
How will it affect our environment?
Well, five different water masses meet in the area, bringing nutrients that help deep-living cold water species to thrive including sponges known as “cheese-bottoms”, worms and long-lived molluscs (these include snails, slugs, mussels, and octopuses). A review from the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide says The Cambo Oil Field Project could threaten hundreds of species over several decades. The first phase would involve driving approximately 170 million metric barrels of oil! Furthermore, the drilling and industrial activity would impact dolphins and whales, which depend on sonar for navigation and hunting the area.
Calum Duncan, Head of Conservation Scotland, said “construction, movement and potential leaking from this pipeline could have devastating consequences for deep-sea sponge and protected features already under pressure from damaging activities such as deep sea trawling.”
What is being done about this?
16 marine protection and climate groups – including Greenpeace UK, WWF UK, The Marine Conservation Society and Friends of the Earth Scotland – have written to the offshore oil and gas environmental regulator, Opred, asking it to include marine impacts when assessing the Cambo drilling application.
There has been many protests against the Cambo Oil Project. Ocean Rebellion, an activist group linked to Extinction Rebellion, said if the government gave the go-ahead to the project it would “deepen the climate crisis and is nothing short of ecocide”. Also, Sophie Miller from Ocean Rebellion told ‘The Independent’: “The Cambo Oil Field is a continuation of bowing to fossil-fuel industry pressure. We need to wean humanity off oil, not dig more wells”.
A Scottish government spokesperson said Nicola Sturgeon has called on the UK government to use its power to urgently re-assess all approved oil licences where drilling has not yet commenced against our climate commitments.
Therefore, there has been public outrage against The Cambo Oil Field as it will not only destroy our precious marine wildlife and habitat, it will also significantly contribute to worsening climate change.
Sources
BBC News – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-59210899
The Independent – https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/cambo-oil-field-sea-life-b1954289.html
By Leah Burgess, Kaitlyn Brannan, Emily Cosh and Eva Allan
