This is an assessment of existing or developing technologies that could be used to sense, track, contain and recover oil released by deep water blowouts or pipeline ruptures. The assessment will include literature reviews, consultation with experts in well control and a review of U.S. and international patents for developing technologies in this field.
This is a Joint Industry Project (JIP) between MMS, Environment Canada, U.S. Coast Guard, Canadian Transportation Development Centre, and the Canadian Petroleum Association to develop the new laser fluorosensor technology for the detection of oil on water, ice and on shorelines. The objectives of this project include: develop the technology of laser fluorosensing for oil spill application including oil on water, on shorelines, among debris, ice or weeds and oil on ice; develop prototype instruments; and test these instruments.
This is a Joint Industry Project (JIP) between MMS, Environment Canada, Imperial Oil Resources Ltd., and the Industrial Materials Institute. This project was initiated to develop new oil slick thickness sensor technology for measurement of oil slick thickness on water. The objectives include: develop the technology of oil slick thickness sensor for the measurement of oil slick thickness on water from an airborne platform.
The Minerals Management Service has initiated a cooperative effort with Environment Canada to participate in a study of improving existing remote sensing technology. Oil spill remote sensing is an important tool for both experimental and operational spills. Remote sensing applications to spills can be expanded if existing problems can be solved and if low cost instruments can be adapted for this purpose. Three approaches were taken:
1) the use of shipborne radar as a practical aid to spill control;
2) the study of Infra- red oil spill remote sensing;
The major objective of this study was to refine the use of existing shipboard navigational radar units to detect and track oil spill slicks. This can be accomplished by modifying tuning procedures so that the radar will accurately depict the short period wave field.
ARA (Applied Research Associates, Inc.) has developed and tested acoustic techniques and sensors mounted in free-swimming platforms [Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) / Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV)] for field applications to measure: (a) slick thickness on the surface of the water, and (b) oil droplet size distribution at the wellhead for subsurface releases of crude oil and dispersants in the presence of natural gas.
This project’s objective was to provide the Coast Guard aviation community, Coast Guard leadership, and BSEE with data that documents the capabilities of organic airborne sensors to detect, map, and report oil spills. The field testing was conducted in May 2015 and July 2016 in Santa Barbara. Data communications from the HC-144A using INMARSAT was tested to evaluate potential file configurations that are best suited for increasing dissemination speed and usability of priority information.
NRL assessed and evaluated the capabilities and limitations of the current oil spill detection and analysis systems for use in offshore oil and gas operations on the US Outer Continental Shelf (OSC). The assessment considered a range of operational and experimental systems that are currently in use, or under development, and their practicality under different oil spill scenarios. The evaluation considered the suitability for intended use and strengths and limitations. It also considered the hardware and operational requirements, mounting and delivery options, and costs.
The goal of this project is to develop innovative, cost effective, and robust tagging devices and an automatic tracking system for use in tracking spilled oil under, or encapsulated within ice. This will be accomplished via the following key novel developments:
The objective of this project was to develop and test a next generation in-situ mass spectrometer payload that operates on an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) glider for real-time subsea hydrocarbon detection and classification. The system is designed to operate for long-term subsea inspection, monitoring, and incident response.
