BIGGEST
THREATS TO HUMANS ON THE PLANET.
Here in Alaska we have lost a
billion dollar a year crab fishery in lower Cook Inlet that went directly into
the pockets of the common folk and nobody seems to understand or care. Between
the EXXON VALDEZ oil spill and the ongoing oil tanker discharges is a wonder we
have any fishery at all.
Discharges of oil from shipping,
offshore extraction of oil, and transport of oil in pipelines is the result of
either accidents or "normal", deliberate operational discharges. Accidental discharges (oil spills)
occur when vessels collide or come in distress at sea (engine breakdown, fire,
explosion) and break open, or run aground close to the shore, or when there is
a blowout of an offshore oil well, or when a pipeline breaks. Much can be done
to avoid accidents, but there will always be unfortunate circumstances and
situations that cause accidents to happen. Operational discharges, on the other hand, are mostly deliberate
and "routine", and can to a very large extent be effectively
controlled and avoided. It is much a question combining available technical
solutions with information, education and a change of attitude among
ship-owners, mariners, offshore platform and pipeline operators.
Before international regulations were introduced to prevent oil pollution from ships, the normal practice for oil tankers was to wash out the cargo tanks with water and then pump the resulting mixture of oil and water into the sea. Also, oil cargo or fuel tanks were used for ballast water and, consequently, oil was discharged into the sea when tankers flushed out the oil-contaminated ballast water to replace it with new oil.
- Crude oil washing systems (COW)
means that the cargo tanks, where tankers carry the oil they transport,
are cleaned by means of high-pressure flushing with crude oil ("oil
to remove oil") or crude oil plus water. This reduces the quantity of
oil remaining on board after discharge. The residues from such tank
washing are pumped into slop tanks and left in a reception facility in
port.
- Segregated ballast tanks (SBT).
Ballast water is taken on board to maintain stability, such as when a
vessel is sailing empty to pick up cargo or after having unloaded cargo.
Ballast water contained in segregated ballast tanks never come into
contact with either cargo oil or fuel oil.
- Clean ballast tanks. To have
so-called dedicated clean ballast tanks (CBT) means that specific cargo
tanks are dedicated to carry ballast water only.
- Operational oil separation and
filtering equipment with an automatic stopping device. Bilge water
is produced when the machinery spaces of a vessel are cleaned. Leaking
cooling water often becomes contaminated with fuel oils and lubricant
oils. Vessels in operation produce oil-contaminated bilge water to a
variable extent. With the right equipment on board, dirty bilge water can
be processed in a way that separates most of the oil from the water before
it is discharged into the sea. If the oil content exceeds the limit, the
discharge is automatically stopped (bilge alarm).
Most sea areas are not Special Areas, but in accordance with international regulations under MARPOL, attempts are nevertheless made to make large oil tankers and product carriers have equipment for crude oil washing and segregated ballast tanks. According to MARPOL Annex I, adopted in 1978, all new crude oil tankers of 20,000 dwt and above, and all new product carriers (30,000 dwt and above), must have SBT. Existing tankers over 40,000 dwt must be fitted either with SBT or with COW systems. For an interim period it was also allowed for some tankers to use CBT.
All oil tankers and other large vessels must be fitted with the equipment described above for bilge water cleaning. However, it has been emphasized that bilge water also contains traces of detergents used in the cleaning process. When mixed, the residues of oil and detergents form a stable emulsion with another density than oil. This sometimes milk-like but highly oil-contaminated mixture is not always "recognized" by the separation and filtering equipment, and thus discharged into the sea.
During drilling, specially formulated drilling
fluids/drilling muds are used to cool and lubricate the drill bit, control
pressure and bring the cuttings (rock or sand from a borehole) back to the
surface. The mud is pumped down the drill pipe and into the hole at high
velocity through nozzles in the drill bit. Drilling muds are usually a mixture
of water, clay, a weighting material (usually barite), and various chemicals.
Drilling muds are
most commonly based on water (WBM), but in some cases mineral oil (OBM) or
synthetics (SBM) is believed to be more biodegradable. Although the use of WBM
is preferred, sometimes OBM or SBM has to be used when drilling conditions are
more difficult. Inevitably, when drilling with OBM, rock cuttings are
contaminated with oil from the muds. In the past when working offshore, these
cuttings were often discharged into sea, in accordance with local regulation.
Where OBM is used offshore, the spent mud and cuttings are now re-injected or
transported to shore for treatment and disposal, or recycling. (The fluid is
recycled through a circulation system where equipment mounted on the drilling
rig separates out the drill cuttings and allows the clean fluid to be pumped
back down into the hole.) The objective of environmental management of drilling
operations is to attempt to minimise the potential environmental impacts (see APPEA and
OEF).Where one finds oil, one often also finds
water. The
water is either naturally present or has been injected into the reservoir to
maintain pressure for production. The proportion of water produced increases as
the oil field matures. As oil is drawn from a reservoir, it is therefore
necessary to separate the water and return it to the ocean. This is what is
known as produced formation water (PFW). Great emphasis is placed on
ensuring that the water returned to the ocean is as free as possible from oil
and chemicals. Strict regulations apply on how much petroleum hydrocarbon is
contained in PFW. The
objective of environmental management of produced water is to reduce the
quantity and to improve the quality of discharged produced water (see APPEA and
OEF).As an oil well is drilled, the drill
cuttings, consisted of crushed rock and clay, are brought to the surface by
the drilling fluid/drilling mud and discharged overboard. New measures to
reduce discharges, such as re-injecting the cuttings into the well, and slim
hole drilling, are being examined and tested by the industry (see APPEA).
According to Statoil,
it ranks today as a tried and tested technology.Similar to the bilge water from machinery
spaces in ships, oil platform machinery space drainage is an
oil-containing mixture. Operational oil separation and filtering equipment is
thus needed to clean the drainage before it is discharged into the sea. If such
equipment is not installed, the oily drainage should be kept on board until it
can be transported to a reception facility.There is no certain figure of how many miles of offshore pipelines there is in the world today. One estimation, published in the 2002 U.S. National Research Council (NRC) report, is
