The International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (OGP) has been under way with its Arctic Oil Spill Response Technology joint industry project (JIP) since January 2012 in a major ongoing commitment by the upstream industry to research and advance spill prevention and response knowledge.

Backed and sponsored by nine oil majors – Statoil, Shell, Total, BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Eni, and the North Caspian Oil Co. – it also is the largest pan-industry program dedicated to this area of R&D.

The four-year JIP is a continuation of the industry’s decades-long R&D efforts to find better methods specifically for the Arctic and cold-weather conditions. Past research has included hundreds of studies, laboratory and basin experiments, and field trials, mostly in the US, Canada, and Scandinavia. The early R&D work in the OGP-led JIP has been focused via 10 individual projects on areas including identifying potential advances in dispersant use, trajectory modeling, in situ burning (ISB), mechanical recovery, and remote sensing.

Challenges and rewards

The unique challenges posed by the region are well known, with prolonged periods of darkness, extreme cold, distant infrastructure, the presence of sea ice, and the higher cost of operations. The potential rewards are equally well known, with an estimated 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30% of its undiscovered gas contained there, according to the US Geological Survey. Of those reserves, up to 80% are believed to lie offshore.

Despite the scale of the above challenges and because of the scale of the potential rewards, the pace of the JIP’s progress has been impressive, with the release just 21 months later of the first six detailed reports covering remote sensing, ISB, and dispersants.

According to program manager Joe Mullin, the six reports include current state-of-the-art technologies for remote sensing above and below the water, operational limits of dispersants and mineral fines in arctic waters, identification of the regulatory requirements and permitting processes in place, available technology and lessons learned from key ISB experiments, and a summary of the regulatory landscape in place to obtain approval to use ISB in arctic/sub-arctic nations.

Key findings

Mullin said the key findings indicate that

  • Dispersants can work in the Arctic and will, under certain conditions, be more effective in the presence of ice than in open water;
  • In addition to increasing effectiveness, the presence of ice can increase the time window within which dispersants can be used effectively;
  • Technology exists to conduct controlled ISB of oil spilled in a wide variety of ice conditions, and that ISB is one of the response techniques with the highest potential for oil spill removal in arctic conditions;
  • There is a considerable body of scientific and engineering knowledge on ISB to ensure safe and effective response in open water, broken pack ice, and complete ice cover gleaned from more than 40 years of research, including large-scale field experiments;
  • Most of the perceived risks associated with burning oil are easily mitigated by following approved procedures, using trained personnel, and maintaining appropriate separation distances; and
  • The current state of technology in remote sensing confirms that the industry has a range of airborne and surface imaging systems used by helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, vessels, and drilling platforms. These systems have been developed and tested for the “oil on open-water scenario” that can be used for ice conditions.

“Through this initial research we have reaffirmed our confidence in the techniques that the industry and its partners have developed over decades of R&D to respond to oil spills in ice. By 2015 the JIP is looking to launch an additional 18 reports covering all six areas of research,” Mullin said.

Dispersants research

Reflecting some of that good previous industry work already done, for example, one of the reports focusing on past studies on dispersants produced common conclusions, indicating that

  • The presence of ice pieces on the water surface in wave tanks increases dispersant effectiveness compared to the same test oil/dispersant/wave energy combination without ice;
  • While a slight wave-breaking action is a requirement for rapid dispersion of dispersant-treated oil in the absence of ice, wave conditions that would produce breaking waves if ice was not present are not required for effective dispersion of oil with ice;
  • Studies in flume basins and at sea have demonstrated that the weathering processes are slowed down when ice is present, enabling a longer time window for dispersant application; and
  • Highly weathered oils that are not dispersed by the addition of dispersant in waves with ice can be dispersed by the application of additional mixing energy such as that supplied by azimuthal stern drive units or other sources such as water-thrusters.

Recommendations on areas for further research, as a result, include the selection of crude oils, and the method used to artificially weather the oil to a particular extent will be a “very important consideration for future work,” the report states. It also found that the wave conditions produced in wave tanks cannot be rigorously correlated with waves at sea. The addition of ice to water in the wave tanks adds another level of simulation that requires experimental justification.

Under-ice spill monitoring

Another of the new reports summarizes existing and emerging oil spill remote sensing and mapping technologies that have the capability to detect and map an oil spill in ice-covered seas from below the surface using unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) and AUVs rather than the current vast majority that are airborne or on-ice systems. This is an almost entirely new approach to oil spill detection, with no operational system or service presently available to remotely detect the presence of oil under sea ice.

Key recommendations include testing, evaluation, and development of both a sensor suite and UUV technology and note that camera, sonar, laser fluorometer, and radiometer systems are the most promising sensors for oil detection using UUVs. The advantages and limitations of these sensors under different sea ice and oil spill scenarios need to be established for each sensor through controlled and repeatable laboratory experiments focusing on sensor signal response both for oil under and encapsulated within ice. Further development of sensor technology to transition potential sensors to AUV platforms also is needed.

While routine AUV operations in ice are now possible, the report states, there is an opportunity to further advance capabilities with respect to vehicle launch and recovery, navigation in complex ice conditions, and mission strategies and data telemetry so that the transition of research-level AUV technology to easy-to-use operational platforms can be most effective.

Dedicated oil spill field trials should be performed once an appropriate sensor suite is incorporated into an operational AUV platform, the report adds.

The six initial reports are available to view in full at arcticresponsetechnology.org.