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 Environment Index
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Oil & Gas UK Monitoring Programme
Offshore hydrocarbon exploration and production activities result in a
range of sources of potential environmental effects; the sources of these
impacts have been evaluated by numerous studies and allow priority issues to
be identified.
Significantly less environmental monitoring is now done in connection with
UK offshore oil and gas activity than in the past; UK has an obligation
under both domestic legislation and policy, and international agreements to
understand the status and health of its marine environment in order to
manage current and future use more effectively and to identify areas and
activities where remediation of past misuse may be needed.
Current environmental monitoring effort around UKCS exploration and
production activities does not consistently provide sufficient data for
permitting assurance, or to meet the UK’s international commitments to
report on UK oil industry effects and to provide data on environmental
quality status.
In 2005, Oil & Gas UK proposed that a strategic joint industry/government
approach be adopted to deliver monitoring information and more in-depth
issue specific investigations. For current sampling surveys, the approach is
therefore a combination of repeated systematic work at a smaller number of
representative sites, working towards specific targeted studies.
The Oil & Gas UK Evidence Review will form the basis for such a strategic
approach; using this study as a gap analysis, we aim to direct our
monitoring efforts towards areas where we currently have little information.
Where operators and developers are required to carry out investigatory
studies to inform environmental assessments carried out in support of their
proposed activities, it is hoped that the Oil & Gas UK Evidence review can
be used as a tool for such information gathering.
UK
Benthos Database (database of offshore benthic environmental surveys
in the UK Sector of the North Sea)
SEA (Strategic Environmental Assessments)
Another useful source of environmental assessment data is available via
the DEAL website.
The DEAL website contains listing of data, reports images, maps and video
footage carried out for the SEA program.
Data categories are:
Archaeology, Benthos, Biological Environments, Birds, Cephalopods, Chemical
Environments, Conservation, Consultation processes, Fish, Geology,
Geophysics, Marine Mammals, Oil and Gas, Operations, Other Marine
Activities, Physical Environments, Plankton, Renewable Energy,
Socio-Economics, Strategic Environmental Assessments and Wind Power.
The DEAL website provides downloads or links to the data |
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Environment Index
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