A major incident has been declared after a leaky pipeline caused 200 barrels of oil “reservoir fluid” to spill into Poole Harbour in Dorset, south-west England. The oil was being transported from nearby Wytch Farm, which hosts western Europe’s largest onshore oil field.
We asked oil industry expert Mark Ireland of Newcastle University to explain why there is an oil field in Dorset, what sort of oil it produces, and what happens next.