Sellafield and dispute over disposal of oil rigs to dominate convention

Sellafield may dominate the debate, but the shadow of the Brent Spar oil rig and the row over its proposed dumping at sea by Shell Oil in 1995 will loom at the Ospar council in Portugal later this week.

The Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources, Dr Woods, who is attending the council in Sintra with the Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Mr Joe Jacob, is committed to the "precautionary principle" in disposal of offshore installations. He believes land-based disposal should be the option where possible, to protect the marine environment - although some scientists believe that certain deep sea sites are potentially less harmful.

Mr Jacob will deal with radiological protection issues at the conference, focusing on technetium 99 discharges into the Irish Sea, while Dr Woods will handle other dumping issues.

Curiously, munitions disposal is not on the agenda; early last month, more phosphorous devices, believed to be from the Beaufort Dyke site off Scotland, were washed up on the east coast.

The ministerial meeting is the first since the Ospar Convention on protection of the marine environment in the north-east Atlantic came into force last February. Along with his colleagues, Dr Woods will be seeking adoption of a new annex to the convention on the protection and conservation of the ecosystems and biological diversity of the maritime area, and strategies to guide work in the future on disposal of hazardous and radioactive substances and eutrophication.

He will also be supporting adoption of an action plan setting out the activities of the commission over the next five years, and will be pushing for an Ospar decision on disposal of disused offshore installations.

Draft guidelines for managing dredged material, and the dumping of fish waste from land-based industrial fish processing operations are also on the agenda, while there are also recommendations aimed at reducing pollution from several industrial areas, including the PVC sector of the organic chemical industry, the primary non-ferrous metal industry, and the aluminium eletrolysis sector.

A task force established by the Minister to study dumping of radioactive material in the Irish Sea is due to report shortly, according to a spokesman for Dr Woods.