Total hit with record fine over North Sea gas leak

The French energy giant Total has been hit with the largest ever fine relating to a health and safety issue in the North Sea oil and gas sector.

The company pleaded guilty to failings in its installation and repair procedures relating to a major leak from its Elgin platform, 150 miles off the coast of Aberdeen, in March 2012. An Aberdeen sheriff court imposed a fine of £1.125m and Total will also cover the court costs of the Health and Safety Executive, which brought the case.

The leak of 6,000 tonnes of gas is the largest ever in North Sea history, The Guardian notes. It occurred after a parts failure in February and a botched repair contributed to a major blowout. A catastrophic disaster was only averted "because winds kept the plume of gas away from nearby flares". A "two-mile wide shipping and aircraft exclusion zone" had to be established and it took 51 days to bring the leak under control.

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"This incident was foreseeable and entirely preventable. There were a number of failures on the part of Total, which contributed to the blowout," Russell Breen, the HSE's operations manager, said. "This could have easily led to loss of life."

Campaigners are reported to be happy with the fine, which Lang Banks, director of WWF Scotland said "reflects the seriousness of the incident". The Guardian notes the next biggest fine for a health and safety failing in the North Sea was less than £1m for Shell in 2003 over an incident that caused two deaths. Most other fines have been in the tens of thousands only.

The paper adds that "from 2000 to late 2012, North Sea oil companies were fined just seven times for oil leaks despite more than 4,123 being recorded".

But union bosses remain dissatisfied. The RMT union told the BBC the fine was a "slap on the wrist" and "wholly inadequate". General secretary Mick Cash said: "For a giant global player like Total this fine can be written off as petty cash and a minor inconvenience and does nothing to hold the senior management of the company to real and genuine corporate account."

The union said a bigger deterrent would have been to publish all the investigation reports into the incident, "exposing the industry to proper scrutiny and accountability".