A new lesson from the oil spill

It happened again. Damn. Looks like it's a period of spills. Waste.

This one is not even comparable to what happened in the Gulf of Mexico, but it's quite significant for the North Sea environment. It's been interesting though to follow the press coverage about this for various reasons:
- the second big oil spill in little more than a year
- the second UK company (even though now it's mostly in the NL)
- the second time people face such environmental tragedy
- the first time social media have an history in reporting such news
Now how it worked?

The Guardian was definitely the most active on this front. A live report documenting day-by-day the spill and a significant social media coverage on both Twitter and Facebook.
But apart from this, this spill was quite silent. Not really a great chaos around it.

Do you think it's because an incredibly efficient PR Department at Shell or because North Sea is not as important as Gulf of Mexico?
Or is there any other reason?

I can't give an answer yet, but you're welcome to help me on this!