BP PLC Thursday reaffirmed its commitment to developing oil and gas resources in the U.K.

In an attempt to hedge against future rising energy prices, Volkswagen announced last week that it will invest up to one billion Euros (US$1.45 billion) in renewable energy.

Royal Dutch Shell said Friday that it had closed a valve from which oil was spilling into the North Sea, calling it a “key step” in stopping the leak at its Gannet Alpha platform.

Britain could earn billions of pounds a year and sustain tens of thousands of jobs by selling space deep under the North Sea for storing carbon dioxide captured from European power station emissions, geologists told the British Science Festival in Guildford on Tuesday.

One of the world's biggest owners of oil and gas tankers has become the first major operator to announce plans to enter the market to transport captured carbon dioxide.

Maersk Tankers, part of Denmark's AP Moller-Maersk, said demand for the service could be vast - around 750m tonnes of carbon dioxide are emitted from large power plants around the North Sea alone.

A British trawler has sparked an international row after being filmed with allegedly endangered fish caught in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea and then dumping the majority overboard in uk waters. Norwegian government coastguards filmed the crew of the Prolific, openly discarding more than 5,000 kg of cod and other dead white fish, or nearly 80 per cent of its catch. The incident took

Ozeaneum, an ambitious oceanography museum opened its doors to the public in the north-eastern German port town of Stralsund on July 12. It contains 39 huge fish tanks and seven life-size models of whales. Ozeaneum is an architecturally dramatic extension to the existing Oceanography Museum in Stralsund, a town on the Baltic Coast. It focuses, in particular, on the world

Human activities are affecting every square mile of the world's oceans, according to a study by a team of American, British and Canadian researchers who mapped the severity of the effects from pole to pole. The analysis of 17 global data sets, led by Benjamin S. Halpern of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, Calif., illustrates the extent to which humans are reshaping the seas through overfishing, air pollution and commercial shipping. The study, published in the journal Science, examines the impacts on nearly two dozen marine ecosystems, including coral reefs and continental shelves. "For the first time we can see where some of the most threatened marine ecosystems are and what might be degrading them,' said Elizabeth Selig, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a co-author, in a statement. "This information enables us to tailor strategies and set priorities for ecosystem management. And it shows that while local efforts are important, we also need to be thinking about global solutions.' The team of scientists analysed factors, including warming ocean temperatures due to greenhouse gas emissions, nutrient runoff and fishing. They found that the areas under the most stress included are "the North and Norwegian seas, South and East China seas, Eastern Caribbean, North American eastern seaboard, Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, Bering Sea, and the waters around Sri Lanka.' Some marine ecosystems are under acute pressure, the scientists concluded, including sea mounts, mangrove swamps, seagrass and coral reefs. Almost half of all coral reefs, they wrote, "experience medium high to very high impact' from humans. Overall, rising ocean temperatures represent the biggest threat to marine ecosystems.