A REPORT BY UPLIFT & OCEANA
In Deep Water
Now is a critical time for the world’s seas and oceans. The climate crisis and increased levels of pollution are putting immense strain on marine ecosystems, including the UK's seas.
For five decades, UK oil and gas production in the North Sea has taken place largely out of sight and, therefore, out of mind. Little thought has been given to the impact of drilling thousands of wells and developing hundreds of oil and gas fields on the UK’s marine environment.
In Deep Water, produced by marine conservation organisation Oceana and climate and just transition campaign group Uplift, is the first-ever comprehensive review of how the UK’s oil and gas industry is damaging our seas. Bringing together scientific evidence, as well as the expertise of marine biologists, satellite imagery analysts and many more, it documents the multiple harms caused by oil and gas production, not just to individual creatures but species populations and whole ecosystems, weakening the UK’s seas just when we need to restore them.
In Deep Water exposes the conflict between protecting the UK’s rich marine biodiversity and expanding oil and gas extraction. It is making our seas too noisy, polluted, built-up, and disturbed for our rich marine life to thrive, as well as harming our seas’ capacity to deliver the essential ‘services’ – from fisheries to coastal protection, water quality to climate regulation – that we need to survive. In Deep Water’s central recommendation is to halt the licensing and approval of new offshore oil and gas extraction in UK waters. It demands that UK leadership on ocean protection begins at home.
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The importance of the UK’s seas
The UK’s seas are home to immensely rich and productive ecosystems that support a huge variety of animals and plants.
Picture the seabed erupting in flurries of yellow, orange and white sponges, where delicate sea pens sway like elegant feathers, and ancient thick-shelled molluscs, older than many of our cathedrals, record the past like quiet sentinels. Imagine harbour porpoise, sleek and purposeful, surging after shimmering schools of sand eels and flurries of herring near the surface. Picture the huge blue bulk of a breaching humpback whale, and a water column rich with the life-sustaining swirl of phytoplankton where small shrimps, fragile-shelled larval molluscs and baby fish hatch, feed and settle.
Our seas are not – as many believe – a muddy wasteland, but a rich, productive ecosystem which plays an essential role in preventing climate breakdown.
This ecosystem is now threatened by an oil and gas industry bent on expansion, including into the UK’s network of designated Marine Protected Areas. The purpose of these protected spaces is to enhance biodiversity, boost fisheries and support the restoration of healthy, functioning ecosystems. But a large proportion of these sites are at risk from current and potential new oil and gas developments within, or very close to, their boundaries.
If the UK government stopped approving new oil and gas, the benefits to our sea life would be endless. Most obviously, it would help the UK deliver its essential emissions reduction targets, which would help reduce the impact of climate change on the ocean. But the wider ecosystem benefits could be game-changing for UK marine conservation too.
Despite the many pressures they face, the UK’s oceans are full of life and worth protecting.
Polluting the UK's seas with oil, chemicals and noise
Oil and gas development is a major source of pollution in our seas, including oil spills, the release of chemicals and microplastics, and a wide range of noise pollution.
Chronic oil pollution, for example, is released in wastewater and in small but routine spills, which are often unreported or underreported. This can lead to large volumes of oil being released into the sea, including in protected areas. Exploration, drilling, and decommissioning of oil and gas infrastructure also lead to the release of toxic chemicals, including PAHs and mercury, which cause harm to individual creatures across species populations and whole ecosystems. Microplastic waste is also released as part of the extraction process, directly polluting the marine environment.
Noise pollution, again created by all stages of oil and gas production, is another major cause of harm, impacting entire ecosystems. In particular, seismic airgun surveys – the loudest and most damaging source of anthropogenic marine noise pollution, used almost exclusively in offshore oil and gas exploration – cause severe harm to protected marine mammals, commercially important fish species and invertebrates.
These impacts, plus continuing to licence new projects, increases the risk of major oil spills, which can have devastating and long-term impacts on marine ecosystems. This risk increases in the North Sea basin as deeper and less accessible sites are exploited.
Permitting new oil and gas activity in designated protected areas fundamentally undermines their potential to restore biodiversity.
Harming habitats, food chains and the UK’s rich marine life
Oil and gas developments are harming some of the UK’s precious marine habitats, vital food chains and whole ecosystems.
The UK is home to some extraordinary species and biodiverse habitats, such as ancient ocean quahogs, harbour porpoises, deep sponge communities, cold water corals, deep-sea mud habitats and biogenic reefs. Oil rigs and other infrastructure are leading to habitat loss, some of which could take decades or more to recover, if at all.
The habitats impacted by oil and gas developments play an important role in our seas. Deep-sea sponge communities and cold-water corals, for example, cycle nutrients in the ocean. Losing or degrading these habitats jeopardises this crucial function. Oil and gas activity also has multiple negative effects on plankton, the basis of marine food webs, from noise and oil pollution, persistent chemicals and contamination by microplastics.
The impacts of oil and gas developments combine and exacerbate the many other pressures we are putting on our seas, from shipping to fishing, resulting in cumulative impacts that are difficult to measure and mitigate.
Case Studies
Weakening the UK’s seas when we need to restore them
Allowing continued investment in new oil and gas developments will mean decades more of these impacts on the UK’s marine environment at a time when we need to be investing in restoring our seas.
Permitting new oil and gas activity in designated protected areas fundamentally undermines their potential to restore biodiversity and provide the many other benefits – from supporting sustainable fisheries to protecting our coasts – that we gain from having a thriving marine environment.
UK waters play a critical role too in tackling the climate crisis. Expanding oil and gas production impacts our seas’ ability to act as a carbon store, both directly weakening this function by degrading the marine environment, and from increasing emissions. The continued burning of fossil fuels is having a catastrophic impact on the world’s oceans and seas. Unless it is rapidly halted, it will lead to the ecological collapse of many marine ecosystems.
Case Studies
Downloads
Reports
Appendices
Supporting Material
Updates
02.05.2023
Update: Oil spill data
About the project
In Deep Water is a collaboration between Uplift and Oceana, aimed at furthering understanding of the marine environmental impacts of the UK's offshore oil and gas industry.
About Uplift
Uplift is a research and campaigning organisation supporting a just transition away from fossil fuels in the UK. Since its establishment in 2021, Uplift has developed leading analysis of the UK’s oil and gas sector and the regulatory framework governing the industry. It has also supported campaigns for policy change to align oil and gas production in the UK with its environmental targets. Uplift is the Secretariat for the All-Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group. Uplift is working with communities and organisations on the coast to strengthen the protection of the oceans and a just transition away from North Sea oil and gas.
Find out more: https://upliftuk.org
About Oceana
Oceana is the largest international advocacy organization dedicated solely to ocean conservation. Oceana is rebuilding abundant and biodiverse oceans by winning science-based policies in countries that control one-quarter of the world’s wild fish catch. With more than 275 victories that stop overfishing, habitat destruction, oil and plastic pollution, and the killing of threatened species like turtles, whales, and sharks, Oceana’s campaigns are delivering results. A restored ocean means that 1 billion people can enjoy a healthy seafood meal every day, forever. Together, we can save the oceans and help feed the world.
Find out more: https://uk.oceana.org
Join us
Join us
Offshore drilling for oil and gas threatens marine life, low-impact fishing economies, recreation, tourism, and pollution from burning those fossil fuels is the leading cause of climate change and ocean acidification. Oceana is working to prevent the expansion of offshore drilling in locations around the world, securing victories in the United States, Belize, and many other countries. In the UK, exploration and development of new offshore oil and gas in the North Sea threatens some of the most important and productive marine ecosystems in Europe.
Oceana aims to stop the expansion of new oil & gas drilling operations in the North Sea. Coastal economies depend on oil-free beaches; and clean, renewable sources of energy like offshore wind could provide far more jobs than oil drilling. Offshore wind energy is already nine times cheaper than fossil fuels.
Drilling in ever deeper and more sensitive areas is especially risky, as spills would destroy pristine habitats and be very difficult to contain or clean up. Drilling in deeper and more remote waters increases the risk of spills, which can irreversibly harmocean life, and threaten coastal businesses and people’s way of life. The 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon disaster shows that no amount of oil is worth the results of a disaster. Where big oil has drilled, big oil has spilled, but their interests are still pushing for access to new areas.
Oceana is collaborating with Uplift and a growing movement of marine organisations and coastal communities to stop big oil's thirst for drilling. Using grassroots organizing, policy work, legal action and media advocacy, Oceana and Uplift are working to ensure marine ecosystems in the North Sea are safeguarded, pristine and oil-free.
We are building a well-resourced broad network of oceans focused groups working together to end offshore oil and gas expansion whilst strengthening the just transition agenda for coastal communities.
We are inviting all marine NGOs, the public and concerned marine & coastal stakeholders to join the movement to protect the North Sea from big oil.
Ways to get involved
- Learn more: Join our webinar explaining the research on 26th April 2023 or request a workshop on the research
- Want to work together to protect our oceans? Get in touch with us at info@indeepwater.co.uk
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