Ecosystem-Based Approaches to Offshore Oil and Gas Operation: An Alternative Environmental Management Technique

Abstract

Abstract The oil and gas sector is one of the most lucrative sectors in business but reducing its environmental impact is one of the most pressing issues today. Practically all activities of hydrocarbons operations are accompanied by undesirable discharges of liquid, solid, and gaseous wastes, which have enormous impacts, especially in the marine environment. There is clearly a need to develop a management approach in oil and gas operations, which ensures minimization of adverse environmental impacts. Unfortunately, in trying to achieve this goal, the oil and gas industry has adopted some major misconceptions in it "environmentally correct" approaches, which are causing further damage to environment. This presentation will address the present environmental misconceptions common in oil and gas development. Some innovative solutions are proposed to solve the problems caused by oil and gas development activities in the marine environment. These solutions are based on the holistic environmental approach, which takes into account the complexity of natural processes and which takes advantage of these processes, rather than working against them. Some of the proposed models are: marine protected area in oil sites (MPAOS), iron fertilization and CO2 utilization (IFCU), integrated coastal pollution balancing (ICPB), artificial recruitment in fisheries (ARFS), and artificial rigs from oil rigs (AROR). The main goal of the proposed approaches is to maintain and restore ecological sustainability and ecosystem integrity. As a result, each solution will not only stop destruction of the environment but also improve the productivity, biodiversity and fisheries in the marine ecosystem. The existing solutions to these problems involves focusing on the individual problems without integrating the total ecosystem, which might benefit one sector but is harmful to the whole ecosystem overall. The proposed approaches can be applied to the marine environment, which environmentalists report is the most abused by the oil and gas sector. These approaches have great significance in utilizing oil and gas operations related pollution, fisheries improvement and ecosystem restoration.