Oil spill off Scotland confirmed as the biggest in a decade

Around 1,300 barrels (210 tonnes) of oil leaked from an offshore platform just 180 km off the city of Aberdeen.

Around 1,300 barrels (210 tonnes) of oil leaked from an offshore platform just 180 km off the city of Aberdeen.

The leak was first detected on August 10 near the Gannet Alpha platform, off the north east coast of Scotland.

Shell UK, which manages the Gannet Alpha platform, admitted a few days later that it had found a second leak in a pipeline located 91m below the sea surface.

By the time the oil spill was stopped, nine days after the problem was first detected, over 210 tonnes of oil had leaked into the North Sea making this the worst oil spill in Scottish waters in a decade.

The Gannet Alpha oil platform, just 180km off the city of Aberdeen, has the capacity to export 88,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

August 2011 was an eventful month for Scotland's oil industry. A week before the Gannet Alpha oil spill, a major pipeline off the north east of the country had to be closed for five days as a World War II bomb was found only a few metres away from the line.

The BP Forties pipeline, passing just 40 km east of Peterhead, transports about 40% of oil produced in the UK.