Old-school Oil Drilling Practices

Old-school Oil Drilling Practices – One of the world’s largest oil and gas fields in the European North Sea is about to close. Over the next few years, thousands of wells will be shut in and hundreds of giant production platforms will be pulled from stormy seas in one of the world’s largest and most expensive production decommissioning exercises.

Are the wheels good? Three fun things to clean? Not so fast. Some environmentalists are calling for drilling to be left behind, at least to support the marine life that thrives around it. No one has any plans to destroy it, fearing that dismantling would disturb toxic mining waste on the seabed.

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From the coasts of California and Brazil to the South China Sea and the Arctic Sea, there may be important lessons for exploiting other offshore oil fields.

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Two decades ago, the North Sea was one of the world’s largest oil fields, producing up to 6 million barrels of oil per day. That figure has now dropped to 1.5 million barrels, while the plant is turning operations to decommission an estimated 600 production platforms in the North Sea. In the British sector alone, there are 470 of them, approximately 10,000 km of pipelines and 5,000 wells, as well as other offshore installations. British industry is expected to operate more than 200 between now and 2025.

Aquatic life around an abandoned oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Office of Safety and Environmental Protection

Many steel rigs are cut down from the seabed and one side is brought ashore or dismantled at sea. Several early giant concrete structures weighing 400,000 tons had to remain because there was no way to move them.

British industry put the latest estimate at $51 billion, but some analysts predicted it would be double that. However, since the deduction is tax-deductible, the cost is borne by taxpayers. Are they worth the net money? Are the costs good for the environment? Some environmentalists don’t say either.

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The problem of oil rigs turned toxic when oil giant Shell tried to move the Brent Spar floating oil storage facility from the North Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. Public outcry led by Greenpeace. A boycott of Shell products was announced in a number of European countries, and even a gas station was set on fire in Germany.

Then, OSPAR, an international agreement of 15 European countries to protect the environment of the Northeast Atlantic, approved new rules requiring almost all industry infrastructure to be recycled or reused when it needs to be brought ashore. . Only about 40 of the largest platforms are unique. Owners can apply for “flaws” to keep them occupied.

Many rigs have been converted into valuable habitats, such as reefs that are home to rare species.

The OSPAR regulations initially seemed like a victory for the marine environment. But there is a growing debate among marine scientists about whether cleaning may sometimes do more harm than good. During their 30-40 year lives, many rigs have become valuable marine environments, providing hard structures that are rare in a sea of mostly soft sand and mud. These are often surrogate reefs occupied by rare species.

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Marine ecologist Lee-Ann Henry and colleagues from the University of Edinburgh studied cold-water coral reefs on 66 platforms in the North Sea. tentacles They studied molluscs and sea anemones. “Platform ecosystems are evolving to mimic things in the wild,” they concluded. A joint research project called INSITE (Influence of Man-Made Structures on Ecosystems) has found that some drilling rigs in the North Sea act like “offshore islands” and support marine communities and fish that require rough surfaces. It was reported this year that it helps attract predators such as mammals and seabirds. .

There is growing evidence that drilling rigs can play an important role in nurturing the natural ecosystems around them. Connected by ocean currents and pipes, they form a network of “stepping stones” between natural reefs, such as cold-water corals that are rare in the Atlantic, Henry said. Aquatic fauna around the remains of the partially suspended Murchison and Thistle A platforms.

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Platforms are generally considered to pose a serious threat to this unique habitat. But platforms at least sometimes help support them. “Some marine mammals are attracted to man-made structures,” says Jonas Theilmann of Aarhus University in Denmark.

Further evidence of the long-term value potential of oil rigs in the North Sea and elsewhere comes from the marine fauna often found near shipwrecks. for example, recent research has highlighted a cornucopia of marine life from 52 German warships sunk off Scapa near the Orkney Islands, north of Scotland, at the end of World War I.

All this confuses environmentalists. Some groups see it as a duty to leave areas as close to the big picture as possible. WWF UK’s Lindsey Dodds said: ‘Hundreds of millions of pounds have been raised over the past few decades. Oil and gas companies operating in the North Sea have a legal and ethical obligation to clean up their mess.”

But others admit it’s not quite that simple. “By removing the reefs, we risk losing hotspots of rich biodiversity that form an important part of the wider ecosystem,” said Ann-Mette Jørgensen, founder of North Sea Futures, a company that promotes ecosystem-supportive design and management. Offshore structures.

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Sam Collin, a marine scientist at Wildlife Trust Scotland, has a similar view of the environmental benefits of leaving oil rigs on the many oil fields off the coast of Scotland. cancellation It causes many environmental disturbances; release of coated chemicals; damage to the seabed; increased sedimentation and destruction of aquatic communities growing in the structure; After the oil platforms are cleaned of contaminants. They are “generally soft structures that continue as reefs. “Leaving them in place is good for the environment.”

Some green groups say the money oil companies save by relocating rigs should be put into marine conservation.

The stability of abandoned rigs can also protect against other threats. “There is a restriction on fishing 500 meters from the oil platforms. These exclusion zones make up about 1 percent of the North Sea and provide important refuges for fish,” says Collin. “Once the rig is removed, these marine communities disappear and return to the fishing grounds,” he said. It is for these reasons that the trust’s 2013 policy states that “the current assumption of complete removal of offshore infrastructure should be reconsidered.”

Neither the Scottish Wildife Trust nor North Sea Futures want big oil off the hook. They say the money saved by maintaining the rigs should be spent on marine conservation, not on shareholders’ pockets. “This will free up $10 billion that could be invested in other projects like natural reef restoration or sustainable fishing or renewable energy,” says Jorgensen.

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There are precedents for leaving rigs to attract marine life. In US waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the “reef-building” program enacted in the 1980s has left behind nearly 500 platforms, more than one-tenth of the total installed. Some progress has been made in encouraging marine life.

California had 27 offshore platforms, mostly in the 1960s and 1970s. Environmentalists are strongly opposed to the idea of abandoning drilling. But some local conservationists who have jumped on the bandwagon take a different stance.

Decommissioned oil rigs brought to a Scottish port await demolition in January 2018. Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Milton Love, a research biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, et al wrote in a 2014 paper that “California’s oil platforms are among the most productive marine fish habitats in the world.” Platforms, he explained, “have a high ratio of seafloor area to structural surface area, which provides a large number of habitats for juvenile and adult fish.”

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The debate continues. However, there is another problem with destroying large amounts of offshore oil infrastructure to dump waste on the seabed.

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