The UK government has sold licences to oil giants to drill on the seabed in marine protected areas to store carbon dioxide, which will impact whales, dolphins and endangered birds, a Ferret investigation has found.
Licences – sold by the government’s oil regulator to companies including Shell and BP – allow carbon dioxide (CO2) produced by industrial sites to be injected into rock formations, acting as storage areas under the North Sea.
The government views carbon storage as crucial to tackling the climate crisis, arguing that it will prevent “unavoidable” industrial pollution from entering the atmosphere and causing global warming.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects involve seabed drilling which could risk the survival of the plants and animals living there and the biodiversity of the whole protection area.
Our analysis found that some storage sites auctioned off overlap with marine protected areas (MPAs) in the North Sea, which are supposed to shield fragile habitats and endangered animals, including seabirds, whales, dolphins and porpoises. These areas also absorb and store carbon themselves.
Government advisers have warned that seabed drilling could damage fragile habitats or smother them in sediment.
The projects will also create industrial levels of noise and disruption, which could threaten some species directly and drive away other fish, seabirds and marine animals.
Seabirds that feed at the sites include puffins, kittiwakes and the great skua, which are all on the UK’s red list of the most endangered birds.
Wildlife conservation experts reacted with despair to our findings, pointing out that marine life in the North Sea has already suffered from decades of the oil and gas industry and destructive fishing, and that the protection areas were introduced to restore nature.
Emma Eastcott, from Whale and Dolphin Conservation told the Ferret: “Offshore CO2 storage activities, which involve seismic surveys, drilling, and increased industrial noise will likely pose significant risks to harbour porpoises and other cetaceans in the North Sea.”
She added: “These species are highly sensitive to underwater noise and disturbance, which can disrupt their communication, feeding, and breeding patterns”.
The government plans to grow the carbon storage industry and offer more than 100 sites under the North Sea on the global market.
Shell was awarded carbon storage licence 28 which is an area off the east coast of England, from Bridlington, Yorkshire, past the Humber estuary and the Wash, to Brancaster Sands in Norfolk.
The Ferret compared the North Sea regulator’s licence areas with maps of MPAs.
We found that Shell’s licence area overlaps with the Holderness Offshore MPA and borders a second reserve – Holderness Inshore – which covers 309 km2 of inshore reefs. We also found that licence 17 – owned by the oil firm, Perenco – overlaps with Holderness offshore zone.
The zones are intended to protect nationally important plant and animal life in the ocean and seabirds above.
The seabed at Holderness Offshore is a fragile landscape of sands and sediment, supporting sponges, starfish, shrimp and crabs. It is a spawning ground for fish, including lemon sole, plaice and European sprat.
It is also home to the protected ocean quahog – a rare mollusc which dates back to the Jurassic period. This large, black clam takes up to six years to reach maturity and can live for over 500 years.
The ocean quahog, along with other molluscs and sponges, starfish, jellyfish and shellfish found at the site, is a so-called “filter feeder”, which means it feeds on microscopic plant or animal matter suspended in the water.
These creatures naturally store carbon, playing a critical role in the “ocean carbon pump” – a complex natural process which absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and eventually results in carbon becoming sediment, stored for thousands of years on the ocean floor.
The Holderness Inshore zone is a shallow site with a seabed of sandbanks and reefs. The reefs are built up by tubeworms and mussels over many decades, and provide a habitat for different species including sponges, anemones, “moss animals”, shrimps, crabs and lobsters.
Threats to the reef undermine its biodiversity and the natural carbon storage process. A recent report found that marine protection areas play a particularly important role in this process.
Our marine protected areas are meant to be havens for ocean wildlife yet are full of destructive activities such as bottom-trawl fishing and chronic spills from oil rigs.
Hugo Tagholm, Oceana UK
It estimated that the UK’s oceans capture 13.5 million tonnes of carbon as sediment every year, adding to the 244 million tonnes already stored in the top layer of the seabed.
Endangered seabirds also depend on the inshore sandbanks and reefs, while Holderness offshore is part of the wintering area for the harbour porpoise – an endangered species which has returned to UK waters.
Carbon storage projects will involve many seismic surveys, drilling, installation of new rigs and new pipelines, followed by injection at multiple points, before the sites are finally capped at the end of their lifetime.
The government expects the initial “exploration and appraisal” stage of each project to take four to eight years. It has no estimate for the operational (injection) stage, disturbance will continue until the project ends.
A Shell spokesperson told the Ferret: “The North Sea Transition Authority awarded 21 licences in the first carbon storage licensing round. Shell follows the terms and conditions of the licences.”
27 carbon storage licences have been issued to firms including Shell, BP, Neptune, Perenco and Chrysaor. Some of the firms are partnering with new CCS project developers covering pipeline development.
The Ferret found that all the licences issued in the southern part of the North Sea fall within special areas of conservation (SAC). SACs are MPAs set up to protect habitats and species most in need of conservation and listed in the European Habitats directive. The SACs in the southern North Sea were drawn up to protect threatened habitats – sandbanks and reefs, and species – the harbour porpoise.
Danny Groves, from the charity Whale and Dolphin Conservation, told the Ferret, “a healthy ocean is fundamental to fighting climate breakdown.”
He noted the recent UN conference COP16, where countries met to agree their goals to protect biodiversity and tackle nature loss. At COP 15 in 2022, the UK campaigned for an ambitious agreement on oceans, this year the UK missed the deadline for delivering its plans. “The UK is way off reaching its targets,” said Groves.
A spokesperson for the oil and gas regulator North Sea Transition Authority (NTSTA) told The Ferret: “We work closely with other bodies to ensure the seabed is managed in a sustainable way to deliver the UK’s carbon storage targets in support of net zero, whilst aligning with government targets and ambitions for nature recovery and biodiversity.”
They added that another regulator, the Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment and Decommissioning (OPRED), conducts habitat screening for each licensing round, including assessments on overlaps, and that the secretary of state, or in Scotland, the Scottish minister has to give assent.
OPRED performed an environmental assessment on the southern North Sea storage sites and found the same overlaps that we identified.
It said that Holderness offshore was already in an “unfavourable” condition due to the impacts of oil and gas activities and industrial fishing. At Holderness inshore, it found that key measures of health were “uncertain”.
However, after noting the existing damage at both sites, OPRED assessed the impacts of approving the four to eight year exploration and appraisal stage as “not significant” or “temporary”, and approved all of the licences.
Although the government and the oil and gas industry strongly support CCS as a solution to the climate crisis, experts have raised concerns and urgently requested a pause.
They question the viability of the technologies, pointing to previous failures, and argue that CCS will keep the UK dependent on fossil fuels. They have challenged the government’s assumptions about the emissions reductions.
Noting the high cost of CCS to the public, they also argue that this money would be better spent on insulating homes and clean, renewable energy.
Hugo Tagholm, executive director of Oceana UK, told the Ferret: “Our marine protected areas are meant to be havens for ocean wildlife yet are full of destructive activities such as bottom-trawl fishing and chronic spills from oil rigs. Carbon capture and storage are risky and unproven technologies used to greenwash fossil fuels. The true answer to tackling the climate crisis is a rapid and just transition to clean, green energy.”
DESNZ and Perenco did not respond to our request for comment.
Cover image thanks to iStock/grafxart888
