The Great Barasway F-66 well - operated by Chevron Canada Limited (CCL) on behalf of itself and co-venturers ExxonMobil Canada Ltd., Imperial Oil Resource Ventures Ltd. and Shell Canada Limited - was the first Canadian participation in the international SERPENT Project. It was drilled in the Orphan Basin, a remote deepwater area located 390 km offshore of St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. SERPENT utilizes Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs), which support deepwater drilling operations, to collect scientific data which would be prohibitively expensive or impractical for universities or research institutions to collect. The project was a cooperative effort between CCL, ExxonMobil Canada Ltd., Imperial Oil Resource Ventures Ltd., Shell Canada Limited, and Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN), the University of Southampton, the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board. This has been an open and transparent relationship whereby al l parties were involved in the study design, and data collected was freely shared. Initial results have included 1,000 world class digital photographs and over 25 hours of video of the organisms that live in water depths of 2,338 m. Initial results have been scientifically exciting; expanding the range of two species of fish, there is also the prospect that a new species of deepwater organism could be discovered once the data are fully analyzed. The extent of the settlement of cuttings and drilling muds was also mapped and compared to predictions made in the environmental assessment. Experiments were also conducted to evaluate the potential settlement of deepwater corals and other organisms on different types of hard substrate.
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