The UK Department for Energy and Climate Change confirmed that oil companies have been fined for spills in the North Sea just seven times since 2000, despite over 4,000 recorded spills in the same period. Total fines from 2000 to 2007 came to around $119,000 dollars, and no company had to pay more than $32,000. The lowest fine came when Venture North Sea Oil and Knutsen OAS Shipping were fined $3,200 each for spilling 20 tons of crude oil into the sea. A total of about 1,226 tons have been dumped into the sea since 2000, but the Department for Energy and Climate Change said there is no "volume threshold" to determine whether a company will be brought to prosecution. The news came as the Department announced that a record-breaking 167 new licenses have been offered to oil and gas companies in the North Sea, and that an additional 61 licenses are under environmental review. While the Department said that the United Kingdom has one of the toughest oil and gas regimes in the world, activists said that it was troubling the United Kingdom viewed itself as operating the global standard, especially as companies push forward to drill in extreme and vulnerable environments. Last week, experts called for more research as BP and Rosneft seek to enter the Arctic. Conditions in the Arctic make offshore drilling particularly risky activists say, as cleanup is limited by extreme cold, strong winds, breakaway ice blocks, and limited daylight in the winter. For the full story, see http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/25/oil-companies-north-sea-spills. For the story on Arctic drilling, see http://www.dw.de/experts-cautious-as-oil-giant-bp-cracks-the-arctic/a-16335090.