Environmental data platform boosts UK exploration safety

A new tool which will enable the UK oil and gas industry to estimate what effects oil and gas exploration will have on the marine environment, is to be developed by a scientist at Heriot-Watt University (HWU).

Dr Kate Gormley of HWU’s Centre for Marine Biodiversity & Biotechnology (CMBB), has secured a NERC Oil and Gas Knowledge Exchange Fellowship worth nearly £250,000 to develop a new environmental data management (EDM) platform.

It is expected to transform environmental impact assessments and monitoring, both routine ones and those during major incidents on the scale of the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Strict framework

Currently oil and gas developments are subject to permit and environmental impact assessment (EIA) requirements under a strict legal framework of national, regional and international regulations, both before and during exploration - and decommissioning.

The UK industry is required to determine if any activity is likely to have a significant impact on the environment or on the conservation objectives of a Marine Protected Area (MPA) under the Scottish and UK Marine Acts.

Baseline data are fundamental to assess these potential impacts, however there is currently limited guidance to state how or when, environmental monitoring should be conducted.

Decommissioning issues

Dr Gormley’s Fellowship will focus on pertinent policy, industry and research questions in relation to decommissioning and ongoing monitoring. Her work may have useful applications beyond oil and gas, including in offshore renewables and the emerging deep-sea mineral mining industry.

Speaking about the fellowship, Dr Gormley highlighted that ensuring that environmental data are collected and stored in an efficient and easily accessible manner will be increasingly important. She commented: “For the last three decades, EU environmental policy has focused on how to determine, manage and mitigate adverse and undesirable impacts to the environment as the result of human activities.

“However, with the introduction of new production techniques, combined with offshore exploration expanding into deeper waters around the UK, there are increased risks to the environment, such as an oil spill incident.

“These developments may highlight a requirement for a change to the current environmental procedures and for more stringent environmental monitoring going forward.

Environmental baseline

“The UK oil and gas industries will need to be able to set an environmental baseline in these relatively unknown territories in order to ensure their conservation.

“Furthermore, over the coming decades, a number of offshore oil and gas installations in the North Sea will be decommissioned, presenting economic as well as environmental challenges.

“That’s why we need transformative new tools and a coherent environmental data platform, so that data – particularly local environmental data - can be quickly accessed enabling scientifically rigorous and accurate monitoring, analysis and assessment of impacts, both on a day-to-day basis and for major incidents.”

Industry best practice

Dr Gormley will examine industry best practice, liaise with other countries involved in oil and gas exploration and production and chart a wide portfolio of environmental data resources from industry, academic research and the wider environmental community.

She will create a web-based portal for data for UK regions, including the Atlantic margin where exploration and production are experiencing rapid growth.

Professor Murray Roberts, Director of the University’s Centre for Marine Biodiversity & Biotechnology (CMBB) added: “We live in an information age, but the environmental data needed by the oil and gas industry have been scattered and hard to access.

“Our new Lyell Centre partnership with the British Geological Survey has allowed us a unique opportunity to compile biological, geological and oceanographic information in innovative new ways.

“This is vital if we’re going to sustainably manage vital energy resources for Scotland and the UK.”

When complete, the new data portal will provide a platform for researchers to explore nearly 40 years’ worth of industry and NERC data which, up to now, have remained fragmented.

Adapted from press release by Katie Woodward

Read the article online at: https://www.oilfieldtechnology.com/exploration/03102014/data-platform-for-uk-exploration-safety-260/