Skip to main content

OSRR-1019-Technological Assessment of Alaskan Arctic Oil Spill Response Temporary Oil Storage Options

Office/Division Program
OSRR
Project Number
1019
Research Initiation Date (Award Date)
Research Performing Activity
PCCI, Inc.
Research Principal Investigator
Robert Urban
Description

Objective: To assess Alaskan arctic oil spill response temporary storage options. This work will be completed under the following tasks: Development of a set of Top Level Requirements (TLR) for temporary oil storage of recovered oil in the Alaskan Arctic. Review of the current state of the art of technologies available for temporary storage. Review of current oil storage capability in Arctic as required by regulation. Final Report

This assessment resulted in a set of three matrices summarizing offshore vessels, onshore storage devices and pumping and transfer systems available for temporary storage of recovered oil and oiled debris. These matrices were used to evaluate temporary recovered oil storage capabilities for two Worst Case Discharge (WCD) scenarios. A user friendly WCD Scenario Tool was created to calculate

volume of oil spilled by day running cumulative volume of spilled oil volume of oil removed by weathering volume of water uptake into an emulsion additional volume of free water collected by skimming percentage of free water removed by decanting percentage of the total volume recovered mechanically
which was then used to determine adequacy of available temporary oil storage capacity.

Latest progress update

The final report and WCD Scenario Tool are complete and posted below.

 

Results of this project were presented at the Northern Oil and Gas Research Forum in Yellowknife, NWT, November 4-6, 2014.