The Brent Spar was not an oil platform, but a disused storage facility for the massive Brent Oil field located in the North Sea, 190 Kilometres north east of the Shetland Isles. Shaped like a giant elongated oil drum, its cylindrical body, the majority of which was submerged in the sea, was 109m in length, more than twice the height of Nelson's Column. Millions of gallons of oil could be pumped there from platforms drilling in the Brent field and stored until it was loaded onto oil tankers.
Constructed in Norway, the Brent Spar was installed in 1976 and decommissioned in 1991 when it was abandoned and left to rust. The Spar was jointly owned by Shell and British Petroleum (BP), but in the contract the two companies drew up, it was Shell's responsibility to maintain the platform, hence they became the focus of the adverse publicity when the decision to dump the Spar became public knowledge.
