Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the available options for conducting remote inspections on offshore wind turbines (above and below the water line) by; identifying commercially available technologies can be used for remote inspections, maintenance, testing, and repair; determining the types of inspections, testing, maintenance, and repairs that can be conducted remotely, developing a list of the critical components that can be inspected, tested maintained and/or repaired through remote capabilities; identify current and future remote capabilities; and identify best practices for doc

The objective of this study was to identify test facilities capable of performing shearing tests under flowing well conditions. Typical flow rates and pressures observed in subsea drilling operations were requested from oil companies by the Contractor. The Contractor identified shearing test facilities, and evaluated if these facilities were capable of shearing under the determined flow conditions. Cost information for identified shearing were obtained from the facilities and submitted in the report to BSEE.

The objective of the study is to provide the Alaska OCS Region with research and cost estimating regarding decommissioning of a typical arctic gravel island-based, oil and gas exploration/production facility. The work considered standard industry practice, available technology, current regulations (e.g. 30 CFR 250 Subpart Q) and market conditions.

This Multi Partner Research Initiative (MPRI) project was a collaborative effort between BSEE, National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), the US Coast Guard (USCG), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), University of New Hampshire Coastal Response Research Center (CRRC), Oil Spill Recovery Institute (OSRI), and Johns Hopkins to advance the response community’s ability to characterize and measure oil slick thickness through collaboration, knowledge sharing, and independent systematic technology assessment and testing.

The project:

This project will develop a defined, repeatable test protocol for testing advancing skimmer systems. SL Ross will convene a workgroup of oil response subject matter experts who will develop a general test protocol suitable for use with a variety of advancing skimmers. The test protocol will be developed for use at the Ohmsett facility; however, large-scale tank facilities will be considered to broaden the protocol’s applicability.

This project developed the ROSI calculator tool to facilitate assessment of an operator's oil spill response plan for a well blowout, tank failure, pipeline leak, or other spill that occurs during winter months and results in recovery operations on snow and solid ice using "yellow gear" equipment as described in the Alaska Clean Seas (ACS) Tactics Manual. Further, it asssed whether further research was recommended to verify and potentially update the formulas incorporated into the calculator tool.

This project continued development of a Recovery Efficiency (RE) sensor that could be used during oil response operations to measure the percentage of oil and water in recovered fluid across the entire range of concentrations. Currently, responders do not have a method for knowing in real time the percentage of water in recovered fluid. Collecting a large amount of water is inefficient in that it requires responders to halt recovery to offload recovered fluids more often. Having real time concentration data allows the responder to adjust operations to maximize oil recovery.

This project evaluated four innovative sorbent samples from different manufacturers at the National Oil Spill Response and Renewable Energy Test Facility (Ohmsett). The sorbents underwent a series of experiments to provide the most relevant data about each sorbent for the benefit of spill responders.         
 
This project was conducted under the Testing of Oil Spill Technologies (TOST) 2022 initiative. 

This latest research initiative on Flame Refluxing technology endeavors to advance the technology readiness towards commercialization (TRL 9) by testing floating Flame Refluxers™ in a controlled-oil spill in an offshore environment. The target burning rate per unit area is 2 to 5 times baseline values with an improvement in emissions (30 - 60% reduction in CO/CO2 ratio) that will reduce black smoke during combustion.

This project will conduct field trials of in situ burns (ISB) to calibrate the NOAA's HYSPLIT air trajectory model by conducting multiple crude oil burns at the Poker Flat Research Range (PFRR) operated by the University of Alaska, Fairbanks with oil handling support by Alaska Clean Seas.