Development of Oil Spill Scenarios for Contingency Planning Along the Brazilian Coast

Abstract

ABSTRACT After an oil spill in Guanabara Bay due to the collapse of a marine fuel pipeline in January 2000, PETROBRAS (a Brazilian company among the 15 largest oil companies in the world) is facing important challenges regarding its environmental commitment to Brazilian society. To face these new challenges, PETROBRAS launched a program for excellence in environmental, health and safety management that includes the development of oil spill contingency plans for its facilities. The present paper describes an oil spill modeling project for 25 facilities along the Brazilian coast. The implementation of the project involved a detailed meteorological and oceanographic characterization of each study area with a review of existing data, data collection, and hydrodynamic modeling covering more than 9,000 km of coastline. Based on the requirement of scenarios for both typical and critical conditions, the oil fates and trajectory modeling system OILMAP was applied to simulate oil spill incidents in all 25 sites, most of them oil terminals from TRANSPETRO, a PETROBRAS subsidiary. Due to Brazil's continental dimensions, the environmental conditions simulated ranged from the subtropical Patos Lagoon in the southernmost part of the country to the equatorial Solimoes River, including estuaries, coastal zones, and offshore sites. The developed modeling system allows oil spill contingency specialists to develop response plans for typical spills in the selected locations. By performing reverse trajectory calculations from sensitive sites such as water intakes or fragile wetlands, it is also be possible to identify probable release locations of spills and principal avenues of vulnerability for these important resources. This paper presents a description of the implementation of the system and the results of this modeling approach for a typical oil terminal located in the city of Vitoria, eastern Brazilian coast.