scholarly journals Oceanographic gradients and patterns in invertebrate assemblages on offshore oil platforms

2008 ◽  
Vol 65 (6) ◽  
pp. 851-861 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry M. Page ◽  
Carolynn S. Culver ◽  
Jenifer E. Dugan ◽  
Brent Mardian
Keyword(s):  
Exotic Species ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Function Analysis ◽  
Sea Anemones ◽  
Oil Platforms ◽  
Offshore Oil Platforms ◽  
Invertebrate Assemblages ◽  
Offshore Oil And Gas ◽  
Channel Patterns ◽  
Offshore Oil

Abstract Page, H. M., Culver, C. S., Dugan, J. E., and Mardian, B. 2008. Oceanographic gradients and patterns in invertebrate assemblages on offshore oil platforms. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 65: 851–861. We explored variability in the composition and cover of subtidal macroinvertebrate assemblages, and the recruitment and growth rates of selected invertebrate species, on seven offshore oil and gas platforms arrayed across a gradient in oceanographic conditions in the Santa Barbara Channel, CA, USA. The major macroinvertebrate taxa (sea anemones, mussels, barnacles, tubiculous amphipods, hydroids, and sponges) were common to all platforms. However, discriminant function analysis (DFA) revealed that the assemblages of two platforms (Gilda and Gail) clearly differed from the other platforms, a pattern attributable, in part, to the presence of conspicuous exotic species (the anemone, Diadumene sp., and encrusting bryozoan, Watersipora subtorquata) on these platforms. If these exotic species were excluded from the analysis, platforms in proximity to each other generally tended to have invertebrate assemblages more similar to each other than to platforms located farther away. Spatial variation in barnacle recruitment onto ceramic plates and mussel growth rate reflected prevailing oceanographic gradients. The existence of along-channel patterns in the composition of platform invertebrate assemblages, and in invertebrate recruitment and growth associated with oceanographic gradients, suggests that assemblages attached to platforms or other artificial structures may be useful barometers of short and perhaps longer term change in ocean climate.

Modelling of methane emissions from offshore oil platforms in the Norwegian sea

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ignacio Pisso ◽  
Amy Foulds ◽  
Grant Allen
Keyword(s):  
Radiative Forcing ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Lagrangian Model ◽  
Model Parameters ◽  
Positive Contribution ◽  
Atmospheric Methane ◽  
Norwegian Sea ◽  
Oil Platforms ◽  
Offshore Oil Platforms ◽  
Offshore Oil

<p>Methane is a major greenhouse gas that has increased since the pre-industrial era and reducing its emissions is potentially an effective way of mitigating the radiative forcing in the short term. The oil & gas industry has a positive contribution to the global atmospheric methane budget with fugitive emissions from infrastructure installations such as offshore oil platforms. As part of the United Nations Climate and Clean Air Coalition (UN CCAC) objective to quantify global CH4 emissions from oil and gas facilities, a series of aircraft campaigns have been carried out in the Norwegian sea among other areas. We report on the Lagrangian modelling activity of the emissions and transport sensitivities used to support the flux assessment. Source identification has been carried out based on backward modelling and has proved useful to interpret observations form the in situ airborne platforms. In addition, forward modelling of the emission plume in high resolution has been applied to constraining the plume height for mass balance methods assessment. Dependency of the resulting uncertainty of the flux estimates on various factors such as the choice of the meteorology and the of the Lagrangian model parameters is also discussed.</p>

scholarly journals The Memories of Our Future: The Memories of Maūi

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Shannon Lenihan
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Marine Species ◽  
Marine Ecology ◽  
Mammal Species ◽  
Cetacean Species ◽  
Narrative Design ◽  
Oil Platforms ◽  
Offshore Oil And Gas ◽  
Offshore Oil

<p>This thesis proposes a way to re-inhabit and transform the adverse identity of an old offshore oil and gas platform. Located 35 kilometers off the West Coast of Taranaki, New Zealand, the Māui A Platform (also known as MPA) is transformed in this thesis design investigation into an Environmental Centre, a living retreat for ‘children’ (in fact, for adults who will be encouraged in the design to see life through the eyes of children). The intention is to generate knowledge and awareness about the environment.  The Māui A and Māui B offshore oil and gas platforms are nearing the end of their economic lifespan. Globally, the current most common decommissioning method of oil platforms involves the use of explosives at the base of the jacket. The structure is then towed to shore and dismantled. The explosives leave scars not only on the landscape the platforms once inhabited; they critically damage the surrounding marine ecology, vast numbers of marine species. This is of severe concern for the marine life and ecosystems surrounding the Māui A & Māui B Platforms as they are located in an extremely sensitive marine area where over 30 percent of the world’s cetacean species inhabit or through which they frequently migrate. Only two of these marine mammal species are not listed as ‘species of concern’ in the New Zealand Threat Classification list.  The future of these platforms does not need to cause more adversity to the environment, but rather can regenerate it. By re-purposing rather than exploding and dismantling these structures, this thesis aims to propose a way to re-inhabit the Māui A Platform and transform it into an educational retreat that enables further awareness, reconciliation, restoration, and protection of marine systems, environment, and threatened marine species. This thesis explores opportunities to create a closed circuit system as a means of providing food, fresh water, water treatment and energy for the platform.  To achieve this regenerative solution in ways that will resonate with those who visit the Māui A Platform, this project enters the realm of the imagination. The imagination is fundamental to learning - hence the proposition that this design be framed as both mythological and experiential. Narrative design – story telling – is explored as a tool to connect sustainable awareness and consciousness as a means to help educate the beneficiaries of this world – our ‘children’. To encourage the adult visitors to fully recognise that the beneficiaries are indeed our children, the thesis investigation will design the new Environmental Centre through the eyes of the child. As a tool to enhance the historic narrative of the site and context, the design strategically frames traces of important or unnoticed elements or equipment of the Māui A Platform.  In order to be understood and engaged with by ‘children’, this project enters the realm of the imagination enabling the design to be both mythological and experiential.</p>

scholarly journals The Memories of Our Future: The Memories of Maūi

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Shannon Lenihan
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Marine Species ◽  
Marine Ecology ◽  
Mammal Species ◽  
Cetacean Species ◽  
Narrative Design ◽  
Oil Platforms ◽  
Offshore Oil And Gas ◽  
Offshore Oil

<p>This thesis proposes a way to re-inhabit and transform the adverse identity of an old offshore oil and gas platform. Located 35 kilometers off the West Coast of Taranaki, New Zealand, the Māui A Platform (also known as MPA) is transformed in this thesis design investigation into an Environmental Centre, a living retreat for ‘children’ (in fact, for adults who will be encouraged in the design to see life through the eyes of children). The intention is to generate knowledge and awareness about the environment.  The Māui A and Māui B offshore oil and gas platforms are nearing the end of their economic lifespan. Globally, the current most common decommissioning method of oil platforms involves the use of explosives at the base of the jacket. The structure is then towed to shore and dismantled. The explosives leave scars not only on the landscape the platforms once inhabited; they critically damage the surrounding marine ecology, vast numbers of marine species. This is of severe concern for the marine life and ecosystems surrounding the Māui A & Māui B Platforms as they are located in an extremely sensitive marine area where over 30 percent of the world’s cetacean species inhabit or through which they frequently migrate. Only two of these marine mammal species are not listed as ‘species of concern’ in the New Zealand Threat Classification list.  The future of these platforms does not need to cause more adversity to the environment, but rather can regenerate it. By re-purposing rather than exploding and dismantling these structures, this thesis aims to propose a way to re-inhabit the Māui A Platform and transform it into an educational retreat that enables further awareness, reconciliation, restoration, and protection of marine systems, environment, and threatened marine species. This thesis explores opportunities to create a closed circuit system as a means of providing food, fresh water, water treatment and energy for the platform.  To achieve this regenerative solution in ways that will resonate with those who visit the Māui A Platform, this project enters the realm of the imagination. The imagination is fundamental to learning - hence the proposition that this design be framed as both mythological and experiential. Narrative design – story telling – is explored as a tool to connect sustainable awareness and consciousness as a means to help educate the beneficiaries of this world – our ‘children’. To encourage the adult visitors to fully recognise that the beneficiaries are indeed our children, the thesis investigation will design the new Environmental Centre through the eyes of the child. As a tool to enhance the historic narrative of the site and context, the design strategically frames traces of important or unnoticed elements or equipment of the Māui A Platform.  In order to be understood and engaged with by ‘children’, this project enters the realm of the imagination enabling the design to be both mythological and experiential.</p>

scholarly journals EXPERIENCE OF USING GNSS MEASUREMENT RESULTS AT IGS STATIONS FOR MONITORING OFFSHORE OIL PLATFORMS ON THE SAKHALIN ISLAND

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-70
Author(s):  
Alexey Davydov ◽  
Elena Gienko
Keyword(s):  
Sea Of Okhotsk ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Offshore Structures ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Labor Protection ◽  
Oil Platforms ◽  
Offshore Oil Platforms ◽  
Measurement Results ◽  
Marine Platform ◽  
Offshore Oil

The article contains a description of the methodology for geodetic monitoring of offshore structures, on the example of the PA-B oil and gas platform located on the northeast shelf of Sakha-lin Island in the Sea of Okhotsk. Monitoring of dangerous industrial assets is crucial for the safe op-eration of the facility, labor protection and environmental. The assessment of the possibility of GNSS monitoring of the stationary marine platform with respect to IGS stations without the use of the coastal network of reference points, while maintaining the accuracy of the coordinates at the centimeter level is performed in the article. The results of experiments on processing GNSS meas-urements with respect to the network of IGS stations using the AUSPOS service are presented. It is shown that this method provides a centimeter level of accuracy and concluded that it can be used for monitoring of marine stationary platforms.

scholarly journals Regional patterns in shallow water invertebrate assemblages on offshore oil and gas platforms along the Pacific continental shelf

2019 ◽  
Vol 95 (4) ◽  
pp. 617-638
Author(s):  
Henry M Page ◽  
Susan F Zaleski ◽  
Robert J Miller ◽  
Jenifer E Dugan ◽  
Donna M Schroeder ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Shallow Water ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Regional Patterns ◽  
Geographical Patterns ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Local Patterns ◽  
Invertebrate Assemblages ◽  
Offshore Oil And Gas ◽  
Offshore Oil

We explored biogeographical and local patterns in the composition of shallow water (≤18 m depth) invertebrate assemblages inhabiting California offshore oil and gas platforms using multivariate analysis of diver- conducted photographic data collected from 23 platforms in 2013–2014. We evaluated the potential importance of sea surface temperature (SST) and other physical and biological factors in driving observed patterns in these assemblages. Prior to this analysis, platforms were grouped into four regions based on local differences in annual mean SST. The composition of invertebrate assemblages varied significantly among the four regions, reflecting differences in the relative abundances of certain anemone, bryozoan, sponge, and bivalve taxa. However, invertebrate assemblages varied idiosyncratically among platforms within a region. Variation in platform assemblages was associated with SST across regions; however, assemblages of platforms in the southeast Santa Barbara Channel were distinct due to the high cover of a non-native bryozoan, Watersipora subatra (Ortmann, 1890). The existence of geographical patterns in the composition of platform invertebrate assemblages and the colonization of one platform by a native bryozoan with southern affinities during elevated SST of 2014–2015 suggest that these assemblages may be useful over broad spatial scales as barometers of short- and longer-term changes in ocean climate. However, over smaller spatial scales, the idiosyncratic differences in invertebrate assemblages among platforms within regions indicates that these assemblages would have to be considered on a platform-by-platform basis under various decommissioning scenarios.

scholarly journals The intelligent monitoring and evaluation of the psychophysiological state of the workers employed on offshore oil and gas platforms

2021 ◽  
pp. 3-6
Author(s):  
Masuma Mammadovа ◽  
Zarifa Jabrayilova
Keyword(s):  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Intelligent System ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Monitoring And Evaluation ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Professional Activity ◽  
Actual State ◽  
Oil Platforms ◽  
Offshore Oil Platforms ◽  
Offshore Oil

Oil and gas companies have an urgent need for technologies that provide complete and reliable information about the actual state of health and safety of personnel. To solve this problem, the article proposes a concept solution for the development of a system monitoring of the psychophysiological health of workers employed on offshore oil platforms. The concept is based on a person-centered approach and allows monitoring of health of employees simultaneously linking them to the context of the environment. The urgency of the problem is confirmed by statistical data, according to which workers in the oil and gas industry are 8 times more likely to get injured. The article analyzes the specific features of the professional activity of the workers employed on offshore oil platforms and shows that the deterioration of their health and psychological condition due to the long-term “sea environment” is unavoidable. It offers to develop an intelligent system for monitoring the psychophysiological condition of workers employed on offshore oil platforms and to assess its suitability for their position with the reference to the Cattell test and fuzzy patterns recognition. The development and systematic operation of such a system may timely detect undesirable consequences for the health status of workers employed on offshore oil platforms and prevent wrong decisions due to the “human factor”

scholarly journals A CFD Analysis of Decommissioned Oil Platforms Jackets on the Brazilian Coast

CFD Letters ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 63-80
Author(s):  
Fernando Rodrigues Gonzalez ◽  
Roger Matsumoto Moreira
Keyword(s):  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Artificial Reef ◽  
Free Water ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Brazilian Coast ◽  
Ansys Fluent ◽  
Oil Platforms ◽  
Offshore Oil And Gas ◽  
Volume Method ◽  
Offshore Oil

Every facility reaches the last phase in its life cycle, which is decommissioning. Since the last decade, this subject has been gaining importance in Brazil’s offshore oil and gas companies. For jacket type rigs, one of the methods widely applied after idling the production is the conversion of these structures into artificial reefs (ARs). There are several critical aspects for choosing the best strategy for cutting and sinking a platform jacket, ensuring the success of an AR from a biological point of view. One of them is the influence of marine currents and their fluid-structure interaction which, by maximizing local upwelling and back vortex effects, favours the growth of aggregated flora and fauna. This study consists in the application of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques for studying the marine flow around a disassembled and sunk jacket in the seabed for the purpose of converting it into an artificial reef. An FVM (Finite Volume Method) from a commercial software (most recent version of ANSYS FLUENT®) is applied with the upwind scheme. A k-ε turbulence model on steady state is chosen. Field data about Brazilian coastal currents are collected and analysed from the amount of information available on a Brazilian Navy's meteoceanographic program. Next, different combinations of cutting and sinking a jacket are studied, always keeping a minimum 55m free water column. The objective is to verify where the formation of local upwelling regions - that is, where the vertical velocity component reaches values equal or greater than 10% of the magnitude of the free flow velocity - is more significant, without decreasing back eddy formation. It is observed that the dismemberment of the jacket with the positioning of its parts in an increasing height sequence in the direction of the prevailing current is favourable to generate local upwelling while tipping the structure at 90° to the prevailing current results in the most voluminous back eddy region.

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