Ocean Oil Research Articles

Определение ущерба природной среде вдоль трассы нефтепровода Восточная Сибирь – Тихий океан

Определение ущерба природной среде вдоль трассы нефтепровода Восточная Сибирь – Тихий океан

An Efficient Marine Oil Spillage Identification Scheme Based on an Improved Active Contour Model Using Fully Polarimetric SAR Imagery

Oil spillage pollution results in damages to marine and coastal environments and ecosystems at all levels. Due to the distinct advantages of fully polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (Pol-SAR), it has been widely employed to improve oil spillage event observations. In this paper, with the aim of enhancing ocean oil spillage identification, an improved scheme was proposed, which was mainly based on an active contour model (ACM), with a special emphases on choosing an optimal initial box boundary for the ACM model, and a noise suppressing process. In this proposed scheme, the ACM initial box boundary was chosen to be the median level contour of the imagined mountain if regarding image grey values as elevations. Meanwhile, following Lee filter operator, a Gaussian smooth operator was hired to further weaken the speckle noise, thereby making the evolution of ACM more stable. Three sets of RADARSAT-2 fully Pol-SAR data were used to test of the proposed method. In addition, the current study achieved the first complete comparison of the identification abilities of the ten most common recently used fully Pol-SAR features for oil spills. The experimental results show: 1) The features of H; v; span; P; ${\text{M}}_{33}$ ; and $\rho $ possessed good distinguishable abilities for oil spillage detection in sea water. Specially, features span and v outperformed other Pol-SAR features with regard to the elaborate distinguishing identifications of small patches of oil spill objects from other small objects, such as oil platforms or ships; 2) An appropriate setting of the initial box boundary of the ACM was able to accelerate the global search, and eventually led to improvements in the accuracy of the oil spill identification, while simultaneously reducing the computational time; 3) The effective noise suppression was confirmed to be very necessary, guaranteeing stability of the ACM evolution. When compared with other traditional methods, the proposed improved scheme was found to be more effective in the overall identification accuracy (99.8%).

Responsibilities and Liabilities for Commercial Activity in the Artic: Introduction

In recent years, there has been much focus on the Arctic. Thus, as the climate in the Arctic gets milder, new business opportunities arise. This is true both with regard to onshore and offshore activities. To oil companies, the prospect of being able to exploit the presumed large reserves of oil in the Arctic Ocean gives rise to consideration. Also, onshore mining has attracted interest. In Greenland, this includes mining of rare earth minerals, some of which can only be extracted by producing uranium as a by-product. Both offshore and onshore business activities will generate a number of related activities in support of the main activities. So will the general interest of the maritime transport sector in taking advantage of the shorter, arctic routes from Europe to Asia. Also tourism has the potential of becoming a prospering industry in the Arctic. Accordingly, also at a more general level, demands for goods, services and labour in the region must be expected to rise. Overall, climate change has given rise to an expectation of an increasing level of activity by private enterprises in the Arctic. However, with an increased level of activity also comes an increased level of risk that something will go wrong. For different reasons the realization of such risks in the Arctic may cause much greater damage than the realization of similar risks elsewhere. Thus, in many Arctic areas the economic survival of small local communities is dependent on the success of investment projects creating jobs and wealth for the inhabitants. If investments go wrong and turn out as failures, this may have profound negative impacts not only for the investor, but for society as a whole. Similarly, consequences of oil pollution at sea in the Arctic may well be much more far reaching than the consequences of similar accidents in other places. For example, it is a simple fact that the effects of oil pollution in the Arctic waters will last for longer than the effects of oil pollution elsewhere since the oil will not dissolve as easily in the cold Artic waters as elsewhere. In addition, large areas in the Arctic are only thinly populated and many areas are uninhabited and extremely difficult to get to. Thus, preventing, limiting and cleaning up after this type of incident poses special challenges. Given the magnitude and potential impacts of the realization of risks related to carrying out activities in the Arctic, the theme of ‘responsibility and liability’ calls for attention. The aim of this book is to explore these responsibility and liability issues.

Seismotectonic investigations of the Chulmakan fault, southern Yakutia, to assess the seismic hazard for the East Siberia–Pacific Ocean oil and power of Siberia gas pipelines

Based on the analysis of space images and maps, the data of laser scanning, trenching, and field geophysical and seismotectonic studies in southern Yakutia, the Chulmakan seismogenic fault is mapped and characterized. The structure and parameters of seismogenic deformations of this fault, which crosses the Power of Siberia gas pipeline, are determined. A preliminary estimate of the Chulmakan seismodislocation age is given, as well as the magnitude of the corresponding paleoearthquake. The level of potential seismic hazard at the site where the Chulmakan Fault crosses the East Siberia–Pacific Ocean oil pipeline and Power of Siberia gas pipeline is determined.

Reliability analysis of the steel-tube umbilical cable cross section in ocean engineering

Umbilical cable is one of the key control equipments during the exploitation of ocean oil and gas, which is named as the “nerve line” in subsea production system. So it is necessary to carry out the reasonable design and accurate analysis of the umbilical cable to meet the safty requirements. The cross section of steel-tube umbilical cable at the top of configuration undertakes the most dangerous loading case during operation. The current design of umbilical cable is based on the safety factor without enough consideration of the influence of random factors. Concerning the importance of umbilical and the particularity of application environment, it is unreasonable to ignore the uncertainty. Firstly, the uncertainty of components in the section is investigated, and the strength of the cross section under the operation condition is analyzed. Based on above content, the limit state equation is established. Then the reliability of the umbilical cable is calculated by improved first-order second-moment method and Monte Carlo method, respectively. The reliability analysis results show that the randomness of the structure has an important impact on the strength of the umbilical cable. It is necessary to add the reliability research in the design of umbilical cable.

Ocean Oil Spill Classification with RADARSAT-2 SAR Based on an Optimized Wavelet Neural Network

Oil spill accidents from ship or oil platform cause damage to marine and coastal environment and ecosystems. To monitor such spill events from space, fully polarimetric (Pol-SAR) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has been greatly used in improving oil spill observation. Aiming to promote ocean oil spill classification accuracy, we developed a new oil spill identification method by combining multiple fully polarimetric SAR features data with an optimized wavelet neural network classifier (WNN). Two sets of RADARSAT-2 fully polarimetric SAR data are applied to test the validity of the developed method. The experimental results show that: (1) the convergence ability of optimized WNN can be enhanced, improving overall classification accuracy of ocean oil spill, in comparison to the classification results based on a common un-optimized WNN classifier; and (2) the joint use of the multiple fully Pol-SAR features as the inputs of the classifier can achieve better classification result than that only with single fully Pol-SAR feature. The developed method can improve classification accuracy by 4.96% and 7.75%, compared with the classification results with un-optimized WNN and only with one single fully polarimetric SAR feature. The classification overall accuracy based on the proposed approach can reach 97.67%. Experimental results have proven that the proposed approach is effective and applicable to classify the ocean oil spill.

Joint Development of Offshore Oil and Gas Resources in the Arctic Ocean Region and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea

AbstractThe Arctic Ocean region presents certain challenges to peaceful cooperation between states, particularly in the locations where ocean boundaries and ownership of the related resources are disputed. The establishment of Joint Development Zones (JDZs) for the development of offshore oil and gas resources in the Arctic Ocean can facilitate international cooperation over resource development where there are competing claims. These claims are generally based on continental shelf jurisdiction under the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). There are several alternative dispute resolution measures available underUNCLOS; however, a number of states have preferred to adopt aJDZas an interim measure to allow development. The significance ofJDZs for the Arctic Ocean region is that they can allow peaceful cooperation and development where the specific circumstances of Arctic claims make it difficult for the respective states to agree on the maritime boundary.

Simulation of Deepwater Horizon oil plume reveals substrate specialization within a complex community of hydrocarbon degraders

The Deepwater Horizon (DWH) accident released an estimated 4.1 million barrels of oil and 1010 mol of natural gas into the Gulf of Mexico, forming deep-sea plumes of dispersed oil droplets and dissolved gases that were largely degraded by bacteria. During the course of this 3-mo disaster a series of different bacterial taxa were enriched in succession within deep plumes, but the metabolic capabilities of the different populations that controlled degradation rates of crude oil components are poorly understood. We experimentally reproduced dispersed plumes of fine oil droplets in Gulf of Mexico seawater and successfully replicated the enrichment and succession of the principal oil-degrading bacteria observed during the DWH event. We recovered near-complete genomes, whose phylogeny matched those of the principal biodegrading taxa observed in the field, including the DWH Oceanospirillales (now identified as a Bermanella species), multiple species of Colwellia, Cycloclasticus, and other members of Gammaproteobacteria, Flavobacteria, and Rhodobacteria. Metabolic pathway analysis, combined with hydrocarbon compositional analysis and species abundance data, revealed substrate specialization that explained the successional pattern of oil-degrading bacteria. The fastest-growing bacteria used short-chain alkanes. The analyses also uncovered potential cooperative and competitive relationships, even among close relatives. We conclude that patterns of microbial succession following deep ocean hydrocarbon blowouts are predictable and primarily driven by the availability of liquid petroleum hydrocarbons rather than natural gases.

Calculating in situ degradation rates of hydrocarbon compounds in deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico

Biodegradation is an important process for hydrocarbon weathering that influences its fate and transport, yet little is known about in situ biodegradation rates of specific hydrocarbon compounds in the deep ocean. Using data collected in the Gulf of Mexico below 700m during and after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, we calculated first-order degradation rate constants for 49 hydrocarbons and inferred degradation rate constants for an additional 5 data-deficient hydrocarbons. Resulting calculated (not inferred) half-lives of the hydrocarbons ranged from 0.4 to 36.5days. The fastest degrading hydrocarbons were toluene (k=−1.716), methylcyclohexane (k=−1.538), benzene (k=−1.333), and C1-naphthalene (k=−1.305). The slowest degrading hydrocarbons were the large straight-chain alkanes, C-26 through C-33 (k=−0.0494 through k=−0.007). Ratios of C-18 to phytane supported the hypothesis that the primary means of degradation in the subsurface was microbial biodegradation. These degradation rate constants can be used to improve models describing the fate and transport of hydrocarbons in the event of an accidental deep ocean oil spill.

Comparing 3d and 2d computational modeling of an oil well blowout using MOHID platform - A case study in the Campos Basin

The oil well blowout releases hydrocarbons into the marine environment as an oil droplets and gas bubbles dispersion. The oil trajectory is strongly influenced by physical, chemical and biological processes. In general, the ocean oil drift studies are based on a two-dimensional approach, whereas the whole oil from a well blowout can be represented by a surface oil leak in the same geographical coordinates. This work is a case study, where MOHID software is used at the Campos Basin region, in which the Lagrangian results of the surface oil leaks were confronted to their well blowout scenarios in different conditions of depth, seasonality (summer and winter), and use of dispersants at the source of the leak. The research results reinforced the importance of the three-dimensional approach to the scenario of deep and ultra-deep waters, especially for cases in which the dispersant injection into the source of the leak was considered.

Estimation of the Public Efficiency of the Infrastructure Project on the Example of the Second Branch ofthe Eastern Siberia - Pacific Ocean Oil Pipeline

Estimation of the Public Efficiency of the Infrastructure Project on the Example of the Second Branch ofthe Eastern Siberia - Pacific Ocean Oil Pipeline

Declining Arctic Ocean oil and gas developments: Opportunities to improve governance and environmental pollution control

There has been global interest in the exploitation of rich hydrocarbon resources in the Arctic for decades. However, recent low oil prices, a low carbon economy climate agenda, and technical challenges of Arctic oil extraction have curbed interest in these Arctic resources. Despite a recent reluctance to explore and develop an offshore Arctic drilling industry, a resurgence in oil and gas prices could spark renewed interests that could pose unacceptable risks of pollution from oil spills. These risks are further compounded by complex governance and sovereignty issues between circumpolar nations. This paper (i) compares cycles of Arctic hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation activity with global energy prices; (ii) outlines current pollution abatement techniques under pan-Arctic national regulations to identify potential gaps; (iii) describes current international frameworks for Arctic governance to highlight how problems could arise if offshore oil drilling returns to the Arctic and associated spills migrate to international waters; and (iv) provides policy recommendations to aid both national and international policy-makers regarding pollution abatement methods for future Arctic drilling.

Experimental Study on a Tuned-Mass Damper of Offshore for Vibration Reduction

With the development of industry, oceanic oil production is one of the most important energy resources. Normally, offshore platform, located in the hostile environment, is easily subjected to unstable environmental loading, such as wind, wave, ice, and earthquake, and it becomes a critical problem to ensure the stability of offshore platform for safely engineering operations. In recent years, tuned-mass damper (TMD) technology has been adopted to reduce vibrations from wind and earthquake influences. Due to the complexity of earthquake excitations, most of researchers were focused on controlling response of structures under wind loads; however, less attention has been put on controlling earthquake response. Therefore, this study concentrates on the seismic reduction of offshore platform by application of a TMD system, and a comprehensively experimental study was processed to validate its effectiveness exposed to different earthquake. A 4-column offshore platform was built according to the actual size of approximately 1:200 ratios, and a TMD system was prepared for the experiment. By the different performance analyses, experimental results indicated that the proposed TMD system can effectively suppress the earthquake stimulus and keep the stability of offshore platform.

The biodegradation of crude oil in the deep ocean

Oil biodegradation at a simulated depth of 1500m was studied in a high-pressure apparatus at 5°C, using natural seawater with its indigenous microbes, and 3ppm of an oil with dispersant added at a dispersant:oil ratio of 1:15. Biodegradation of the detectable hydrocarbons was prompt and extensive (>70% in 35days), although slower by about a third than under otherwise identical conditions equivalent to the surface. The apparent half-life of biodegradation of the total detectable hydrocarbons at 15MPa was 16days (compared to 13days at atmospheric pressure), although some compounds, such as the four-ring aromatic chrysene, were degraded rather more slowly.

BUSINESS AS USUAL AND A LITTLE POLITICS

(By Anastasia Kornya. Vedomosti, Feb. 24, 2016, p. 2. Condensed text:) According to a European Court of Human Rights ruling on the KirovLes case, published on Tuesday [Feb. 23], the Russian courts arbitrarily applied the law when they found Aleksei Navalny and Pyotr Ofitserov guilty of acts that are indistinguishable from regular commercial activities .1 In the opinion of the ECHR, Russian courts did not provide a fair trial, thereby violating Art. 6 of the European Convention [on Human Rights]. They didn't even try to hide blatant irregularities, in particular by failing to consider the applicant's arguments about the political underpinnings of his case, which the ECHR found were at least tenable. It recalled that the investigation was opened [in 2011] after the publication of Navalny's investigation of the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean oil pipeline project involving high-level Russian officials; then, in 2012, the KirovLes case was reopened on the direct orders of [Russian] Investigative Committee head Aleksandr Bastrykin at the same time Navalny was investigating [Bastrykin's] business.. . . ... Officially, the ECHR did not see any political motivations behind Navalny's prosecution: The complaint regarding violations of Art. 18 of the Convention was declared inadmissible. However, a fairly clear assessment of the political underpinnings of the case was actually given in the part of the decision dealing with the violation of the right to justice, says Navalny's lawyer Olga Mikhailova. In addition, three of the seven judges (including the judge from Russia, Dmitry Dedov) issued a separate opinion in which they insist that the Navalny case is a clear attempt to silence him through criminal charges, [a claim] that has not been adequately assessed by the ECHR. ... The ECHR ruled that Russia must pay the claimants 8,000 euros in compensation for nonpecuniary damages (if the sentence is revised, they would be able to recover compensation in a Russian court), as well as 48,053 euros to Navalny and 22,893 euros to Ofitserov for costs and expenses.. . . ... Lawyer Dmitry Agranovsky says the ECHR decision is meant to prove a point, noting the nonstandard amount for legal ... 1[In July 2013, a Kirov court found Navalny guilty of embezzling funds from timber company KirovLes. He was sentenced to five years in a penal colony, but released pending appeal. Ofitserov, former director of the Vyatka Lumber Company (VLC), was found guilty of assisting Navalny and sentenced to four years; see Current Digest, Vol. 65, No. 29, pp. 5 - 9. - Trans.] ... compensation (rarely is this amount more than 850 euros) and the speed with which the ruling was rendered (30 months is a record pace for Strasbourg [i.e., the ECHR]). Such decisions - and Navalny has been awarded record compensation amounts before - gives leverage to those advocating Russia's withdrawal from the European Convention, the lawyer warns... .

Numerical Simulation of Synthetic Aperture Radar Images for Ocean Oil Spill Pollution

ABSTRACTIn order to study the scattering mechanism of oil spill pollution and the impacts on synthetic aperture radar images, both the computational modeling and its inverse problem are explored. The forward–backward iteration method and some optimization techniques are proposed to simulate the electromagnetic scattering from extra-large-scale sea surfaces. The local iteration methodology is first proposed to reduce the computational complexity to the order of rather than in terms of the nearly planar structure of the sea surface; therefore, the proposed method can effectively collect the massive backscattered data from the oily, polluted sea surface. Finally, based on the simulated data, the dual-polarization synthetic aperture radar images of the oil spill sea surface are studied for various conditions of sea states, radar polarizations, frequencies, and incidence angles.

Numerical and experimental analysis on motion performance of new sandglass-type floating body in waves

In order to solve the performance limitations of traditional ship-type and cylindrical FPSO, this paper presents a new concept of sandglass-type FPSO. For the new sandglass-type floating model, firstly by using classic boundary element method based on wave potential theory, the effects of shape parameters on motion performance of sandglass-type model are studied. Then the wave frequency versus minimum heave motion RAO is selected as the critical design parameter to control heave motion of new floating model, and its convenient engineering estimation expression is theoretically and mathematically deduced. Furthermore, on this basis the design guideline for sandglass shape is analyzed and proposed. Next according to the information of a cylindrical FPSO, a sandglass-type floating model with the same basic function has been designed. Finally, by analyzing the numerical solution and experimental data, the numerical boundary element method and design guideline in this paper can be validated to be effective and accurate. Furthermore, it can be found that the sandglass-type design can obviously improve the hydrodynamic performance of FPSO. Thus this paper can provide an innovative engineering platform and a design proposal for the development of ocean oil and gas exploitation.

Development of Adaptive De-noising Algorithm using Wavelet Technique for a Linear FM Acoustic Signal

Background/Objectives: It is highly important to analyze on the challenges that influence the acoustic medium. The underwater signals are affected by variety of background noise (ambient noise) in the ocean which is both natural and man-made. Method/Statistical Analysis: The methodology involved in this research work is wavelet decomposition technique to reduce the underwater noise present in the acoustic signal to extract the details present in it. Findings: In this research work, a detailed knowledge on the ambient noise which was collected from the shallow water region of Bay of Bengal, was obtained by characterizing it and a suitable denoising algorithm was formulated using wavelet technique, in particular Gabor wavelet and improvement in SNR is verified using MAT lab simulink tool. Applications/Improvements: The applications of underwater acoustics includes exploration of the environment, monitoring and tracking the marine mammals, exploration of oil in the deep ocean, monitoring the submarines and underwater autonomous vehicles etc,. A comparison was done between Gabor wavelet and Symlet wavelet in denoising the noisy acoustic signal to improve the signal to noise ratio. It enhances the performance of Gabor wavelet. From the result, we can understand that, for an input SNR range of -15 db to 0 db, we obtained an output SNR in the order of 9dB, 15db and 14db at 20 KHz, 66 KHz and 86 KHZ respectively which enhances the performance of Gabor wavelet.

Study and Test of a New Bundle-Structure Riser Stress Monitoring Sensor Based on FBG

To meet the requirements of riser safety monitoring in offshore oil fields, a new Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG)-based bundle-structure riser stress monitoring sensor has been developed. In cooperation with many departments, a 49-day marine test in water depths of 1365 m and 1252 m was completed on the “HYSY-981” ocean oil drilling platform. No welding and pasting were used when the sensor was installed on risers. Therefore, the installation is convenient, reliable and harmless to risers. The continuous, reasonable, time-consistent data obtained indicates that the sensor worked normally under water. In all detailed working conditions, the test results show that the sensor can do well in reflecting stresses and bending moments both in and in magnitude. The measured maximum stress is 132.7 MPa, which is below the allowable stress. In drilling and testing conditions, the average riser stress was 86.6 MPa, which is within the range of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) mechanical simulation results.

Role of entrained droplet oil on the bioavailability of petroleum substances in aqueous exposures

Bioavailability of petroleum substances is a complex issue that is affected by substance composition, the physicochemical properties of the individual constituents, and the exposure preparation system. The present study applies mechanistic fate and effects models to characterize the role of droplet oil on dissolved exposure and predicted effects from both neat and weathered crude oils, and refined fuel oils. The main effect from droplet oil is input of additional dissolved hydrocarbons to the exposure system following preparation of the initial stock solution. Toxicity was characterized using toxic units (TU) and shows that replenishment of bioavailable hydrocarbons by droplets in toxicity tests with low droplet content (e.g., <1mg/L) is negligible, consistent with typical exposure conditions following open ocean oil spills. Further, the use of volumetric exposure metrics (e.g., mg/L) introduces considerable variability and the bioavailability-based metrics (e.g., TUs) provide a more consistent basis for understanding oil toxicity data.