Arctic cold, ice extends oil spill response window

April 28, 2010 00:46

Petroleum News: Research shows in-situ burning, dispersant especially effective

The April 25 edition of Petroleum News carried the results of a joint industry program that looked at the feasibility or otherwise of responding effectively to an oil spill in ice-infested waters.

Concerns about the ability of industry to clean up oil spills is one of the core questions in the debate about whether or not oil and gas development should take place in the Arctic offshore, Petroleum News senior staff writer Alan Bailey noted at the beginning of the article.

Working on the basis that knowledge and data are the keys to addressing Arctic oil spill concerns, the results of a joint industry program begun in early 2006 and coordinated by Norwegian research company SINTEF, was the basis for the article. Bailey said the program had completed a series of research projects, establishing facts about the properties of spilled oil in icy water and the effectiveness of potential response techniques.

The researchers were able to obtain permission from the Norwegian government to put actual crude oil into the sea in carefully controlled conditions, thus enabling the testing of oil behavior and cleanup effectiveness in ice conditions closely similar to those that might be encountered in an Arctic oil spill emergency. So, in addition to carrying out a variety of laboratory tests, the researchers were able to run some experiments in fjord ice at SINTEF’s research facility at Svea in Svalbard, as well as carry out larger scale tests in sea ice in the Barents Sea.

The end results of the research include a dataset for the development of oil spill contingency plans; a web-based oil spill response guide for Arctic and ice-covered waters; and some new technologies for offshore Arctic cleanup.

And on March 14 in Anchorage, Alaska, members of the program team presented their findings to an audience of oil industry personnel, government officials and people from environmental organizations.

The Norwegian Research Council and oil companies Statoil, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Agip KCO and Total sponsored the research, with numerous other entities contributing to the program, including the U.S. Minerals Management Service, Alaska Clean Seas, the Cordova-based Oil Spill Recovery Institute and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Read the full Petroleum News story here, and talk to me about it in the comments section that follows

—Mac Ackers

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3 Comments for "Arctic cold, ice extends oil spill response window"

The following are comments from our readers. They do not represent the view of Greening of Oil or its owner.

it will be interesting to see if all the oil spill technology the oil companies have talked about for years can clean up BP's oil in the gulf of mexico. if they had burned the oil within a couple of days in 1989 from the exxonvaldez there would have been far less environmental damage.

Kristy Marquette | April 29, 2010 09:21 | Report Abuse

I attended the presentation by SINTEF. It's important to note that their study pertained to recovering oil on the water surface, not persisting on or under ice. They outlined several promising technologies for recovery, but most were only effective if they are deployed within 6-8 hours of a spill. They acknowledged that drilling rigs have equipment at the ready, but tankers do not. In the event of a tanker spilling oil in a place like the Chukchi, response equipment would need to be transported from Anchorage and most likely not arrive until most options are ineffective. I'm not convinced.

T. Scheick | April 30, 2010 03:20 | Report Abuse

I agree that the recovery techniques tested by SINTEF apply to oil on the water, between ice floes or in broken ice, although as I understand it the low temperatures would extend the window for using techniques such as burning or chemical dispersal to a few days rather than just hours.
I don't know of anyone proposing to use tankers to ship oil from future oil platforms in the U.S. Arctic offshore. The likely scenario is the use of pipelines to carry the oil onshore. However, whatever transportation method is used, government regulations require a viable spill response plan for a worst case spill scenario,with the appropriate response equipment staged at locations that enable the plan to be put into action.
Having said that, there is a substantial amount of spill response equipment already staged on the North Slope, primarily by Alaska Clean Seas, the main oil spill cooperative. If a company were to operate oil tankers in the region, it would probably contract for response equipment use with coops like Alaska Clean Seas and it would possibly need to stage additional response equipment or vessels on the Slope to support its response plan.

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Arctic cold, ice extends oil spill response window

Petroleum News: Research shows in-situ burning, dispersant especially effective

3 Comments for "Arctic cold, ice extends oil spill response window"

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