It's less than a year now since Alex Salmond informed the Scottish Parliament that because Scotland had a lot of experience in the offshore oil industry, then we shouldn't be too concerned about safety. He dismissed Patrick Harvie's concerns that there might be an oil leak in the aftermath of the BP Gulf of Mexico disaster, relying instead on a belief that these kind of things will magically never happen in Scotland purely because it is Scotland.
Well, it's happened.
No, the oil leaking from the Shell platform in the North Sea is not on the same scale as the BP one last year, but the oil now covers 60 square miles of water. That's a substantial size in anyone's book, and the worst leak in Scottish waters in 10 years.
Shell themselves have hardly been forthcoming with information. The leak started last Wednesday, and it took them until Friday to acknowledge it publicly and Saturday to say how serious it was. According to the Scotsman article, they're refusing to talk to a very worried RSPB Scotland. This has all the hallmarks of the public obfuscation and downplaying that BP employed throughout last summer as they claimed the leak in the Gulf of Mexico wasn't there, wasn't severe, wasn't as big as claimed, wasn't as big as claimed, wasn't as big as claimed...
The Scottish Government really need to stop relying on thinking that there's some kind of Caledonian Voodoo that can magically stop oil leaks from happening in our waters. 40 years of experience can make you experts - but it can also make you complacent.
Here's the video of Patrick Harvie and Alex Salmond from last September:
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