ABSTRACT
From the first Greenpeace press releases after the Brent Spar occupation, and throughout the ensuing debate, the environmental group and other objectors to the deep-sea disposal of the Spar referred time and again to the ‘precedent’ that would be created if Shell’s original plan was accepted. The implication, tacit or explicit, was that if the Spar was dumped it would be taken by the offshore oil and gas industry as carte blanche for the similar disposal of other North Sea installations.
