Ministers and officials from nine European countries and executives from the European Commission have agreed to implement a series of measures to protect the North Sea and its approaches from oil spills and other pollution.
In the light of the pollution of the Gulf of Mexico caused by the Deepwater Horizon accident earlier this year, the Ministers agreed to take appropriate actions to prevent and respond to accidental and illegal pollution from offshore oil and gas operations in the area. The agreement was struck in Dublin at the end of November.
An action plan lays out how the governments of the UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Ireland intend to prevent pollution, prepare for incidents and respond to them in a co-ordinated way.
The states are all parties to the 1969 Bonn convention, which Ireland acceded to earlier this year. The European Commission is also a party. The action plan is divided in three parts: strategic aims, operational objectives and specific actions.
The Bonn convention's parties intend to boost aerial surveillance of shipping and other maritime activities, and ensure efficient evidence gathering following pollution incidents. National responses will be aligned and better co-ordinated.
Specific actions agreed include updating the agreement's counter-pollution manual.
There will also be joint training exercises to prepare for combating possible oil spillages in the region. The action plan will be reviewed in 2012.
Meanwhile he American National Oceanographic and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) has closed an area of the Gulf of Mexico fishing grounds to red shrimp fishing after black tar balls were found in a catch. The NOAA said "The precautionary measure was taken after a commercial shrimper, having hauled in his catch of the deep water shrimp, discovered tar balls in his net."
As suspected, the oil has not disappeared and this is a setback for shrimp fishermen in the region who thought the worst was over.
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