Environmental management of offshore oil operations

The greatest environmental risk in offshore oil production lies in the upstream phase. That is the stage at which the process of finding and extracting crude oil begins. But it can have less impact if the activity is well supervised and managed. In the process of oil exploitation unregulated activities can at any time disrupt rich and sensitive marine ecosystems or undermine the fishing activities on which local fishermen depend. This recent oil discovery in the deep offshore Sangomar block comes at a time when scientific knowledge of the marine environment is very limited. Similarly the implementation of appropriate technical measures to reduce environmental risk has yet to materialize. This being said the State''s capacity to monitor and ensure responsible environmental management remains weak. In this respect the risk of negative impacts on the marine biodiversity on which fishing depends in the face of the development of the oil project off the Petite Côte merits particular attention from all stakeholders.