A dash 8 first officer reported diverting to nearest suitable because of an engine oil leak.

Narrative:

I did a walk around; finding no anomalies. We then flew to ZZZ; and upon my between flights walk around; I noticed that the forward underside of the #2 nacelle was dripping engine oil. I notified the captain immediately and a write up followed. Contract maintenance arrived and spent about an hour cleaning all excess oil inside and outside of the nacelle. We then did a runup for about 5 minutes to find further leaking at the direction of maintenance; but none was found. The aircraft was signed off and we boarded and departed. Curious to see if the leak had truly stopped; I engaged the autopilot at 10;000 ft and looked out my window at the #2 engine. I immediately noticed that oil was indeed streaming out of the oil service door; the larger gull door; and various other seams in the inboard side of the nacelle. I told the captain; and he had a look as well. We both agreed that a great deal of oil would have to be leaking for us to see continuous streams of it as we did; so he contacted our dispatcher. After a brief discussion; maintenance control and our dispatcher advised that we discontinue the flight and land as soon as possible. ATC advised gave us a direct clearance; and we descended to a normal landing. I can only speculate that this occurred because the #2 engine was over serviced with oil; and/or it had a leak.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A Dash 8 First Officer reported diverting to nearest suitable because of an engine oil leak.

Narrative: I did a walk around; finding no anomalies. We then flew to ZZZ; and upon my between flights walk around; I noticed that the forward underside of the #2 nacelle was dripping engine oil. I notified the Captain immediately and a write up followed. Contract maintenance arrived and spent about an hour cleaning all excess oil inside and outside of the nacelle. We then did a runup for about 5 minutes to find further leaking at the direction of maintenance; but none was found. The aircraft was signed off and we boarded and departed. Curious to see if the leak had truly stopped; I engaged the autopilot at 10;000 FT and looked out my window at the #2 engine. I immediately noticed that oil was indeed streaming out of the oil service door; the larger gull door; and various other seams in the inboard side of the nacelle. I told the Captain; and he had a look as well. We both agreed that a great deal of oil would have to be leaking for us to see continuous streams of it as we did; so he contacted our Dispatcher. After a brief discussion; maintenance control and our Dispatcher advised that we discontinue the flight and land as soon as possible. ATC advised gave us a direct clearance; and we descended to a normal landing. I can only speculate that this occurred because the #2 engine was over serviced with oil; and/or it had a leak.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.

Attributes
ACN	890421
Time
Date	201005
Local Time Of Day	1801-2400
Place
Locale Reference	ZZZ.ARTCC
State Reference	US
Environment
Flight Conditions	VMC
Light	Dusk
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	Dash 8-100
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 121
Flight Phase	Climb
Component
Aircraft Component	Lubrication Oil
Person 1
Function	Pilot Flying First Officer
Qualification	Flight Crew Commercial
Events
Anomaly	Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe