OSPAR Review of the State of the North Sea: Oil Inputs and their impacts on the Marine Environment of the North Sea

The scope of the OSPAR Commission includes monitoring input of pollutants from sea, land and atmospheric sources entering the North Sea and wider North-East Atlantic. The OSPAR Commission is responsible for implementing the requirements of the OSPAR Convention on the protection of the marine environment of the North-East Atlantic. As part of its activities, the Commission published the results of those monitoring activities in Quality Status Reports in 2000 and 2010. Those reports set out the state of the environment in the OSPAR maritime area as a whole and its regional areas such as the North Sea. Data on oil inputs from the offshore oil and gas industry and from shipping that enters the North Sea is generally available, but less so for the broader OSPAR maritime area. Data on the impact of oil inputs on the marine environment has much more limited availability. This chapter provides an overview of the development of the OSPAR Convention and Commission and examines the findings of the Quality Status Reports, both for the wider OSPAR maritime area and the North Sea more specifically.