After 10 days of oil spilling out into the North Sea, the company Shell has finally managed to stop the worst oil spill in a decade by closing a leaking valve and blocking the main source of the leak at the Gannet Alpha platform. Shell used a team of expert divers to go under and carry out the procedure while being supported by “technical teams onshore”.

Shell now faces numerous problems on its own, among them the cleanup of the massive amount of oil which is estimated to have been around the equivalent of 1,300 barrels of oil.

Officials from the UK government is now investigating Shell’s oil spill fiasco by trying to first pinpoint on how the oil spill started and also determining if Shell is deserving of huge fines and giving mandatory compensations for the oil spill cleanup and potentially not following safety guidelines such as protecting its workers from chemical hazards.

Some citizens are calling out for their own due compensations because they make their living by fishing in the North Sea. The government notified the general populace of the dangers of going near the Gannet Alpha platform.

Authorities, particularly the local Scottish authorities, will be going through each of the involved Shell workers and others in the oil spill.

Environmental groups are currently bemoaning the possible damage to the marine life that the oil spill may have caused and the potential damages that could have been prevented if Shell had sooner announced the oil spill.

However Shell spokespeople stated that the company had carried out surveys of the surrounding areas and reported that the oil spill would cause very minimal damage on the local marine life and not reach shores.

Shell is now being barraged with criticisms of a “lack of transparency” because the company had not released any word of the oil spill, which occurred on Wednesday, until Friday.

Government authorities warned Shell that it should be more transparent concerning oil-related incidents as investigations led by the Sunday Herald has revealed that Shell is one of the major oil companies that has one of the worst safety records operating in the UK.

(Cover Photo: Ken Taylor/Shell/AP)