Struan Stevenson: After BP's debacle, Europe must insist on North Sea safety

THE recent Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has cost BP billions and effectively closed all fishing activity in the area for more than three months.

Much of it remains closed to this day, with oyster and crab fishermen in particular unsure of whether or not permanent damage has been done to their fishery. BP has been shelling out millions of dollars in compensation to these fishermen and even to the owners of tourist boats who have seen their business dwindle to nothing, as the oil slick swept ashore down hundreds of miles of coastline.

If such a situation arose in the North Sea, what would be the outcome? Most oil exploration and drilling in the EU is taking place in the waters that surround Scotland. The potential impact on fisheries of an unstoppable spill would be horrendous and could wipe out entire communities around the Scottish north- east coast. Cod, haddock, plaice, prawns and even mackerel stocks could be devastated. The entire Scottish fishing industry could collapse.

Fishermen are already living on a knife-edge after years of savage cuts to their total allowable catches (TACs) and quotas and to the number of days they are permitted to go to sea. More than 60 per cent of the Scottish whitefish fleet has been decommissioned and scrapped over the past decade. The few dedicated fishermen who remain struggle against a background of rising fuel costs and dwindling fish stocks. Theirs is the most dangerous profession in the world and many fishermen lose their lives each year in their effort to bring fresh seafood to our tables.

Until now, few have considered the prospect of an unregulated oil spill in the North Sea, similar to that in the Gulf of Mexico and yet it is in these waters that hundreds of oil rigs operate and new exploratory wells are being sunk on a regular basis. A recent discovery 110 miles south-east of Aberdeen, the four-field Catcher complex, is reckoned to be one of the biggest finds in the past ten years, with an estimated 350m barrels. So the doom-and-gloom mongers who predicted the imminent end of North Sea oil have been proved wrong. North Sea Oil looks set to continue for years to come, but that means the potential threat of a catastrophic spill will continue as well.

The Gulf of Mexico disaster shows that despite the highest standards and availability of the best technologies, risks like these can never be fully prevented. It is just a matter of chance and time before a new disaster takes place and it could happen in the North Sea.

This is why MEPs are demanding some assurances from the European Commission. It must confirm that it has contingency plans in place to compensate fishermen if such a situation ever arose in the EU. But in the meantime it must also tell us what it intends to do to secure the safety and security of oil extraction operations, and to insist on the highest level of environmental protection and disaster prevention in EU waters.

It is now essential that the commission, the council and the member states work with the oil industry and regulators towards securing the highest safety and security standards uniformly across all EU oil platforms and drilling operations.

Some MEPs are even calling for a moratorium on all drilling, but we cannot simply close down the oil industry indefinitely. Nevertheless, we must insist on the highest possible standards of safety and security while suitable compulsory EU-wide insurance schemes are designed to compensate fishermen and other affected businesses in the event of a spill.

l Struan Stevenson is a Conservative MEP for Scotland and senior vice-president of the parliament's fisheries committee.