Abstract or Keywords
The DWH blowout and Taylor Energy sediment-slump incidents raise questions regarding siting of energy facilities and preparedness for large-scale and long-duration spills. The culmination of 10-years of research supported by the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative provides important new perspectives related to oil spill preparedness and impact assessment. The DWH, at 1522 mwd, and the release of a light sweet-crude oil was just one of the potential "family of blowouts" that could potentially occur at varying locations. Since oil exploration has continuously gone deeper, with drilling now occurring to at least 2960 mwd, high-pressure testing facilities have been developed to predict oil partitioning, solubility and droplet sizes for blowouts occurring at varying depths oil-types and gas/oil ratios. High-pressure facilities can also be used to determine the efficacy of sub-surface dispersant injection and other oil spill countermeasures. During DWH, under-sea oil plumes rich in BTEX compounds and a regionally-expansive MOSSFA (Marine Oil Snow Sedimentation and Flocculent Accumulation) event caused significant ecological damage resulting in 3-15% of the oil on the seafloor. There are now advance modeling tools to better define intrusion geometry, chemistry, trajectory and fate and to predict MOSSFA events. The lack of environmental baselines for waters, sediments and biota prior to the spills led to equivocation on the extent of impacts. In the event of future large-scale and long-term spills, a broader array of environmental and ecological baselines now will provide the information needed to quantify impacts and assess long-term consequences. Baselines near existing and planned exploration and production infrastructure include, but are not limited to, oil-derived components in waters, important fish species, sediments and benthic ecosystems. Prior to the commitment of drilling exploratory oil wells in regions prone to sub-surface slumping, sediment coring and shallow seismic techniques can identify areas susceptible to and that have experienced geologically-recent sediment slumping thus preventing an incident like that which topple and buried the network of well infrastructure. This talk will review a range of policy recommendations aiming to fulfill this ambitious but necessary endeavor.