The proposed study would provide the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) with a continuation of the research efforts conducted since 2009 regarding the conditions that occur during the annual freeze-up season in the US Beaufort and Chukchi seas. Additionally, the study would provide BSEE with the observations and analysis during the break-up of Arctic sea ice in the US Beaufort and Chukchi Seas (first evaluated by BSEE in 2016-2017).
Although remote sensing technologies have been advanced for airborne and spaceborne sensors, it is still challenging to detect oil under/encapsulated in ice as well as on seafloor.
The objectives of this project are to:
This project will enhance Ohmsett’s capability to conduct testing in a drift ice environment. These enhancements have been identified through lessons learned from the past nine years of ice testing at Ohmsett. Successful execution of this project will lead to lower overall future test costs, better utilization of the available test time, more repeatable test conditions, and better analysis of the ice field.
This project will advance the BOWHEAD Vessel Ice Management System, developed under BSEE project 1102 to provide an ice-free zone for oil recovery in drift ice conditions. The contractor will retrofit the BOWHEAD prototype based on recommended enhancements identified during January 2021 testing at Ohmsett. The retrofitted BOWHEAD will be tested at Ohmsett in 2023 to quantify its ability to improve recovery of oil in drift ice conditions over tactics that are currently specified in Alaska oil spill removal organizations' tactics manuals.
This project will develop a 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 will provide recommendations for further research and/or testing that should be conducted to reassess, verify, and potentially update the formulas incorporated into the calculator tool.
The purpose of this research is to build upon the knowledge gained from freeze-up studies conducted since 2009 and to build upon the information acquired during the 2017 break-up study, which BSEE will make publicly available.
The purpose of this research is to build upon the knowledge gained from freeze-up studies conducted since 2009 and to build upon the information acquired during the 2017 and 2020 break-up studies, which BSEE will make publicly available.
As Arctic ice has receded, exploration and development of oil reserves have increased, thereby requiring an effective strategy to mitigate oil spills. PNNL proposes demonstrating oil detection in and under sea ice via FMCW radar by leveraging recent advancements in commercial subcomponents and systems. Utilizing Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) hardware will address hardware reliability issues and focus work on implementation challenges.
This project will study and test the Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) sensor to detect oil in/under ice. For oil detection and thickness estimation under/in ice, where the access to the imaged region is limited to above its surface, AUB proposes a planar sensor design where the electrodes are mounted on a single plane and placed at a relatively close distance above the ice surface.
This project designed an ROV mounted tooling skid to detect, inspect, and recover pockets of oil under solid ice, and to scrape and remove oil-laden ice crystals formed on the underside of the ice. The tooling skid consists of a pumping system, a manipulator arm with collection nozzle and scraping tool, navigation, and lighting to allow differentiation of oil, water, and ice. It has a standardized “plug and play” power and data protocol such that it can be used with any qualified ROV.