Monitoring of Impacts of Offshore Platforms in the Adriatic Sea (Italy)

Abstract

The oil and gas industry is truly global, with operations conducted in every corner of the world, since the worldwide increasing of energy demand has strongly raised the exploitation of non-renewable resources. The date of birth of the offshore industry is commonly regarded as 1947, when it was successfully completed by Kerr-McGee the first well in the Gulf of Mexico (Chakrabarti et al., 2005). Since 1950 about 7,000 platforms have been constructed and installed around the world, and today most of these structures, which represent more than 65% of the total, are located along the American coast of the Gulf of Mexico, the remainder is concentrated in the North Sea, Middle East, Africa, Australia, Asia and South America (Wilson III and Heath, 2008). Approximately 0.4% of world reserves of oil and gas are located in the Mediterranean basin (Pinder, 2001) and therefore this area represents one of the areas that will have greater expansion in offshore activities in the coming years (Maksound, 2004). In sixty years, Italy has produced 75% of the gas discovered. The natural gas production in 2010 was 8 billion cubic meters. The oil and gas production wells in the entire Italian territory are on the whole 1200 and the platforms at sea are 127, which extract especially gas (Paini, 2001; Assomineraria, 2004; 2011). These offshore structures are mainly distributed along the Northern and Central Adriatic coasts (about 90 platforms (De Biasi et al., 2006; Maggi et al., 2007), on depths between 10 and 120 meters, but also in the Ionian Sea and in the Strait of Sicily (www.eni.it).