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The Mariner field is a newly completed oil field in the UK continental shelf with an estimated reserve of 396 million cubic meters (2.5 billion barrels) of oil. Despite the energy security benefits its development provides to the UK, it constitutes a challenge to environmental conservation due to the existential threat of an oil spill. To plan an effective oil spill response operation, it is essential to have a sophisticated knowledge of the behavior of an oil spill in the Mariner field. More importantly, only a few studies exist that sufficiently describe the oil behavior in the Mariner field under varying environmental conditions, due to its recent development. This study aims to predict the behavior (fate and trajectory) of a heavy oil spill from the floating storage unit platform in the Mariner field. For this purpose, General NOAA Operational Modeling Environment (GNOME) and Automated Data Inquiry for Oil Spills (ADIOS) were selected as the simulation tools to predict the trajectory and fate behaviors of oil for 5 days in October under the forcing of two different ocean models, namely Real-Time Ocean Forecasting system (RTOFS) and Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM). Results indicated that approximately 87% of the spilled oil remained at sea after 5 days. This apparent persistent behavior of the oil on water raises a concern for marine organisms like seabirds, whose vulnerability has been found to peak in October. This implies the need for swift response action if such organisms must be protected. Furthermore, shoreline beaching was not recorded within the 5 days of observation; however, the oil slick was found to encroach the Norwegian territorial waters. This indicates the need to plan for implementation of UK–Norway joint contingency plan to combat a future oil spill of this manner. This work could serve as a reference or guide to oil spill responders to inform the process of systematic environmental conservation planning in the Mariner field, UK continental shelf. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides some new insights into the variability and severity of petroleum hydrocarbon contaminants from the first ever environmental audit of Nigeria's downstream oil facilities. Petroleum facility operation is the backbone of energy supply all over the world but this process is not without potentially avoidable water pollution incidents. Meanwhile, past studies tend to ignore patterns of pollution parameters at the national scale and are often limited in scope and coverage. To address this research gap, Principal Component Analysis and Kruskal-Wallis test were applied to evaluate the variability in ‘national’ pollution data to tease-out novel patterns that best discriminate between groups of pipeline facility network across Nigeria's downstream sector. The key results are (a) a mix of strong and weak statistically significant ( p -value < 0.001) and positive correlation between pollutants across three pipeline regions; (b) the main eigenvector statistically explains 71.5% of the variance found in the ‘national’ pollution parameters; and (c) according to the hierarchical cluster analyses, we now know that there is an incoherent pattern from the group data and a rather weak association which suggest that the type of oil facility systems in operation or their products have no effect on the severity of hydrocarbon pollution parameters found in water samples across the three regions. The implication of these results is that it might be cost-effective to apply a uniform approach in responding to future petroleum water contamination depending on site specific hazards posed by toxicity level, temporal nature of detected chemicals and human exposure. Future study should consider the use of carbon stable isotope ratios to assess variances in hydrocarbon contamination in water bodies, and tailor this for cost-effective national response given the aforementioned caveats. This can guarantee a more sustainable operations and enhance response to water pollution incidents. The study approach and, possibly its outcomes, could be a useful starting point for nations with new oil and gas discoveries such as Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Uganda, The Gambia, Liberia and so on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oil spills in estuaries are less studied and less understood than their oceanic counterparts. To address this gap, we present a detailed analysis of estuarine oil spill transport. We develop and analyse a range of simulations for the Humber Estuary, using a coupled hydrodynamic and oil spill model. The models were driven by river discharge at the river boundaries and tidal height data at the offshore boundary. Satisfactory model performance was obtained for both model calibration and validation. Some novel findings were made: (a) there is a statistically significant (p < 0.05) difference in the influence of hydrodynamic conditions (tidal range, stage and river discharge) on oil slick transport; and (b) because of seasonal variation in river discharge, winter slicks released at high water did not exhibit any upstream displacement over repeated tidal cycles, while summer slicks travelled upstream into the estuary over repeated tidal cycles. The implications of these findings for operational oil spill response are: (i) the need to take cognisance of time of oil release within a tidal cycle; and (ii) the need to understand how the interaction of river discharge and tidal range influences oil slick dynamics, as this will aid responders in assessing the likely oil trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]