Arctic oil spill JIP outlines industry's R&D progress

摘要

A collaborative industry effort to enhance arctic oil spill prevention and response technologies is producing impressive insight into what's possible for this ultra-sensitive ecological region. The International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (OGP) has been under way with its Arctic Oil Spill Response Technology joint industry project (JIP) since January 2012 in a major ongoing commitment by the upstream industry to research and advance spill prevention and response knowledge. Backed and sponsored by nine oil majors - Statoil, Shell, Total, BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Eni, and the North Caspian Oil Co. - it also is the largest pan-industry program dedicated to this area of R&D. The four-year JIP is a continuation of the industry's decades-long R&D efforts to find better methods specifically for the Arctic and cold-weather conditions. Past research has included hundreds of studies, laboratory and basin experiments, and field trials, mostly in the US, Canada, and Scandinavia. The early R&D work in the OGP-led JIP has been focused via 10 individual projects on areas including identifying potential advances in dispersant use, trajectory modeling, in situ burning (ISB), mechanical recovery, and remote sensing.