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Autonomous marine environmental monitoring: Application in decommissioned oil fields

Autonomous marine environmental monitoring: Application in decommissioned oil fields
Autonomous marine environmental monitoring: Application in decommissioned oil fields
Hundreds of Oil & Gas Industry structures in the marine environment are approaching decommissioning. In most areas decommissioning operations will need to be supported by environmental assessment and monitoring, potentially over the life of any structures left in place. This requirement will have a considerable cost for industry and the public. Here we review approaches for the assessment of the primary operating environments associated with decommissioning — namely structures, pipelines, cuttings piles, the general seabed environment and the water column — and show that already available marine autonomous systems (MAS) offer a wide range of solutions for this major monitoring challenge. Data of direct relevance to decommissioning can be collected using acoustic, visual, and oceanographic sensors deployed on MAS. We suggest that there is considerable potential for both cost savings and a substantial improvement in the temporal and spatial resolution of environmental monitoring. We summarise the trade-offs between MAS and current conventional approaches to marine environmental monitoring. MAS have the potential to successfully carry out much of the monitoring associated with decommissioning and to offer viable alternatives where a direct match for the conventional approach is not possible.
0048-9697
835-853
Jones, Daniel O.B.
44fc07b3-5fb7-4bf5-9cec-78c78022613a
Gates, Andrew R.
327a3cc6-2e53-4090-9f96-219461087be9
Huvenne, Veerle A.I.
f22be3e2-708c-491b-b985-a438470fa053
Phillips, Alexander B.
f565b1da-6881-4e2a-8729-c082b869028f
Bett, Brian J.
61342990-13be-45ae-9f5c-9540114335d9
Jones, Daniel O.B.
44fc07b3-5fb7-4bf5-9cec-78c78022613a
Gates, Andrew R.
327a3cc6-2e53-4090-9f96-219461087be9
Huvenne, Veerle A.I.
f22be3e2-708c-491b-b985-a438470fa053
Phillips, Alexander B.
f565b1da-6881-4e2a-8729-c082b869028f
Bett, Brian J.
61342990-13be-45ae-9f5c-9540114335d9

Jones, Daniel O.B., Gates, Andrew R., Huvenne, Veerle A.I., Phillips, Alexander B. and Bett, Brian J. (2019) Autonomous marine environmental monitoring: Application in decommissioned oil fields. Science of the Total Environment, 668, 835-853. (doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.02.310).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Hundreds of Oil & Gas Industry structures in the marine environment are approaching decommissioning. In most areas decommissioning operations will need to be supported by environmental assessment and monitoring, potentially over the life of any structures left in place. This requirement will have a considerable cost for industry and the public. Here we review approaches for the assessment of the primary operating environments associated with decommissioning — namely structures, pipelines, cuttings piles, the general seabed environment and the water column — and show that already available marine autonomous systems (MAS) offer a wide range of solutions for this major monitoring challenge. Data of direct relevance to decommissioning can be collected using acoustic, visual, and oceanographic sensors deployed on MAS. We suggest that there is considerable potential for both cost savings and a substantial improvement in the temporal and spatial resolution of environmental monitoring. We summarise the trade-offs between MAS and current conventional approaches to marine environmental monitoring. MAS have the potential to successfully carry out much of the monitoring associated with decommissioning and to offer viable alternatives where a direct match for the conventional approach is not possible.

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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 19 February 2019
e-pub ahead of print date: 22 February 2019
Published date: 1 June 2019

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 429347
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/429347
ISSN: 0048-9697
PURE UUID: cd1afaee-b128-446b-8a8d-0a29c0519c91
ORCID for Veerle A.I. Huvenne: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-7135-6360
ORCID for Alexander B. Phillips: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-3234-8506

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 26 Mar 2019 17:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 07:42

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Contributors

Author: Daniel O.B. Jones
Author: Andrew R. Gates
Author: Veerle A.I. Huvenne ORCID iD
Author: Alexander B. Phillips ORCID iD
Author: Brian J. Bett

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