Memorandum 47
Submission from BP
INTRODUCTION
1. BP is organized into three different
business segments ie Exploration and production; Refining and
marketing; and Gas, power and renewables. Within the Exploration
and production or "Upstream" segment, activities include
oil and natural gas exploration and production, together with
the management of crude oil and natural gas pipelines, processing
and export terminals.
2. BP currently has exploration and production
interests in twenty five countries. Our main areas of activity
include the USA, UK, Russia, Norway, Canada, South America, Africa,
the Middle East and Asia. These interests are managed in a series
of strategic performance units together with central functional
support in specific areas of engineering, technology and science
from the exploration and production technology group (EPTG). This
has its main centres in the US (Houston) and UK (Sunbury-on Thames).
3. BP's activities in the marine environment,
particularly in terms of marine science and technology, are largely
confined to the Exploration and production segment. There are
some minor activities in the other two segments but these are
not discussed further below.
BP'S INVESTMENT
IN MARINE
SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY
4. EPTG leads BP's Upstream Research and
Development (R&D) programme, within which specific areas of
engineering and technology are pursued. The 2007 total investment
in the EPTG program amounts to around £220m. A major focus
for the R&D programme is the development of technologies and
expertise in deepwater. This includes the ability to explore and
produce oil and gas deposits in water depths of up to 3,000 metres.
5. Within this R&D programme, specific
interests in marine science and technology include the development
of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Work is ongoing to enable
AUVs to monitor subsea pipelines with inbuilt intelligent tracking
devices. Also included in the technology development programme
is research into the deepwater installation of subsea hardware.
Since 2001, BP has led a Joint Industry Project (JIP) on this
technology, where the water depths (>2,000 metres) necessitate
the use of fibre rope deployment systems rather than the traditional
steel wire-based systems. This project ("DISH") has
28 companies including nine oil and gas operators, six major contractors
and thirteen specialist supply companies.
6. BP's central Group Technology function
supports strategic research relationships with a range of universities
and academies around the globe, including Cambridge University
and Imperial College in the UK. In the US, there is a collaborative
agreement on ocean sciences and earth climate with the Scripps
Institution for Oceanography at the University of California,
San Diego. Work there includes development of autonomous underwater
"gliders" to monitor the sea temperature, salinity and
ocean currents. It is planned to use such devices to monitor the
"Loop Current" and its associated eddies in the Gulf
of Mexico. These can cause significant operational difficulties
for exploration drilling activities and during the installation
of offshore facilities. In addition, work is planned to investigate
the use of high frequency radar devices to monitor the surface
current field from fixed offshore installations. Two such devices,
mounted some kilometers apart on adjacent installations, can provide
a detailed spatial picture of the surface current speed and direction
across a wide area. The primary focus is monitoring the Loop current.
7. From the environmental perspective BP
is involved in several initiatives and projects related to marine
science. Most of these projects aim at gaining a better understanding
of the marine environment as well as environmental monitoring.
These projects are developed in close collaboration with the scientific
community who maintain their independent scientific view. The
key areas where BP is involved include seabed and deep water monitoring,
seabed surveys and sound and marine mammals.
Some examples include:
Serpent
8. This is a joint industry effort of on-going
monitoring of the seabed West of Shetland (WoS) using remote operated
vehicles (ROVs). It has international scientific acclaim with
its own website and has published its own scientific papers. BP
is a founding partner along with Subsea 7 and Transocean. The
project has featured in a number of media publications and broadcasts
including the BBC's Blue Planet series. There has been a big drive
to develop and promote educational links to schools both in the
UK, USA and elsewhere in the world.
9. Additionally BP is working with the Natural
History Museum on a project in the WoS to study the fate of cetacean
carcasses in the deep-sea which have been shown to support novel
and new species and allows scientific information to be gathered
on how animal communities develop on them.
Seabed Surveys
a
10. Elsewhere in the North Sea BP is revisiting
the original environmental baseline surveys and drill cutting
piles as part of our response to the EU Liability Directive and
to understand long term impacts on the marine environment. With
SERPENT we have PhD students based at the National oceanography
Centre, Southampton (NOC,S) researching the colonisation of platforms
in term of marine life. Other projects include mussel sampling
on our southern North Sea gas installations and working jointly
with geophysical contractor Gardline Environmental looking at
herring spawning grounds around our Amethyst installations. Both
these activities are ongoing research.
Deepwater Monitoring
11. "DELOS" (Deep ocean Environmental
Long term Observatory System) is deep water technology being developed
with BP funding in conjunction with OceanLab Aberdeen in partnership
with National Oceanographic Centre, Southampton (NOC,S), Aberdeen
University, Glasgow University and Texas A and M University. The
deep sea environment is still poorly understood with surveys regularly
discovering new habitats and communities of animals previously
unknown to science. Two sea floor monitoring platforms will be
deployed, one within 50 metres of a sea floor well, and a second
5 miles from any sea floor infrastructure. These platforms will
be situated off Angola for 25 years and serviced every six months
by ROV. The long term monitoring by the DELOS platforms will allow
BP, amongst other benefits, to determine long term natural environmental
conditions at deepwater sites, compare any changes observed at
near field monitoring sites, increase the understanding of mechanisms
linking climate change to deep water ecology and improve understanding
of the reef effect from large fixed structures in deep water environment
AFEN (Atlantic Frontier Environmental Network)
12. This presents data and their interpretation
from extensive seafloor environmental surveys carried out in 1996
and 1998 on the UK Atlantic margin to the north and west of Scotland.
An area of more than 30,000 km2 of the seafloor was studied, first
by using sidescan sonar to provide acoustic imagery of the different
environments within the area, then by sampling for biological,
chemical and geological analysis, and by photographic and video
surveys. The purpose of the work was to provide a regional assessment
of this part of the Atlantic margin, and also to provide a baseline
against which future changes might be gauged
Post-Doctoral Fellowships
13. In the recent past BP (2001) sponsored
two, three-year postdoctoral posts in the fields of deep-sea invertebrate
taxonomy and biodiversity hosted by the Texas A & M University
(USA) and the NOC,S (UK). These two posts were part of a concerted
effort by BP to take a leading role in improving our understanding
of deep-sea ecosystems. The primary aims of the roles were twofold;
firstly to develop and maintain a database of ecological data
from BP deep water surveys, and secondly to identify critical
needs for improved taxonomy from this database and thus publish
taxonomic, biodiversity and other ecological papers on this work.
Marine mammals JIP
14. This is a joint effort organised under
the auspices of the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers
(OGP) in collaboration with the scientific community. It focuses
on understanding the possible impacts of sound on marine mammals
as well as on mitigation solutions.
Deepwater Engineering
15. We also conduct a wide range of research
into the engineering of subsea and floating systems required for
deepwater production facilities. While much of this is very specific
to the energy industries we have developed much expertise in areas
of interest to the wider marine community eg vessel motions ,
mooring and station keeping systems , current induced vortex induced
vibrations for long tendons and risers, corrosion in the deep
ocean environment . We could present a more comprehensive summary
of this work if this was of interest to the Select Committee.
BP'S POLICIES
REGARDING ACCESS
TO DATA
ON THE
MARINE ENVIRONMENT
FOR THE
PURPOSES OF
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
16. There is no overarching policy within
BP regarding the access of our data on the marine environment
for the purposes of scientific research. However, in general terms
BP's marine meteorological and oceanographic ("metocean")
data is available to the scientific community. This includes data
on such parameters as waves, currents, sea temperatures and salinity,
and associated marine meteorological information such as winds,
air temperatures, atmospheric pressure etc..
17. However, one difficulty the scientific
community faces is knowing exactly which data sets BP has available.
This fact is generally true for the offshore industry on a global
basis. To address this issue, several companies, including BP,
have joined an initiative organised by OGP. The project is called
"SIMORC" (System of Industry Metocean Data for the Offshore
and Research Communities). Its funding comes from the EU under
a Framework VI programme. The SIMORC system consists of an index
metadatabase and a database of actual data sets that together
are accessible through the Internet. The index metadatabase is
public domain, while access to data is regulated by a dedicated
SIMORC Data Protocol. This contains rules for access and use of
data sets by scientific users, by oil & gas companies, and
by third parties. All metocean data sets in the SIMORC system
database undergo quality control and conversion to unified formats,
resulting in consistent and high quality, harmonized data sets.
BP will make available freely its data sets within SIMORC to registered
scientific users.
18. Another example of BP sharing metocean
data is collaboration with the groups monitoring the fluxes in
the Faroe—Shetland Channel. These include the Fisheries
Research Services in Aberdeen and the Faroese Fisheries Laboratory
in Torshavn, Faroe Islands. Estimation of fluxes has been made
for several years and includes measuring the currents and monitoring
the temperature and salinity along transects between Scotland
and the Faroes on a regular basis. BP have made available to these
institutions our long term measurements of currents at our West
of Shetland sites, around the Foinaven and Schiehallion production
systems, in order to assist with their calculations.
19. In the Gulf of Mexico, BP performs detailed
monitoring of the ocean current conditions using acoustic Doppler
current profilers (ADCP's). In conjunction with other operators,
and in collaboration with the US Minerals Management Service,
these ADCP data are made available publicly, in real time, at
the US National Data Buoy Centre web site.
21. In the area of marine meteorology in
the North Sea and West of Shetland, BP is collaborating with Shell
to extend an existing real-time network of weather monitoring
systems (the "Metnet" system). BP's stations are being
added in order to extend the spatial coverage. The data include
meteorological and wave parameters and are used by the companies
to plan operations such as helicopter flights and supply boat
schedules. The data are also provided to meteorological agencies
to assist in their provision of weather forecasts. The wave data
is freely provided to DEFRA and is included on their public internet
system ("WaveNet"). Also in conjunction with Shell,
we are assisting the Offshore Safety Division of the HSE in establishing
wave and water level criteria for the UK sector.
22. Very recently, we have started discussions
with the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory to make available water
level data from offshore platforms, measured using the radar sensors
deployed to monitor waves and water levels. This data could assist
a planned research project at POL to examine the spatial variability
of storm surge conditions in the North Sea.
23. BP has also provided funding for certain
scientific advances in the marine sciences. A good example is
our sponsorship of the publication of the atlas series linked
to the World Ocean Circulation Experiment ("WOCE").
The WOCE project office was based at the then Southampton Oceanography
Centre (now NOC,S). In the period 2001 to 2003, BP provided a
total of U$300k to assist the publication of the 4 volume atlas
series.
July 2007
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