Environment
Novel Norwegian technologies help in Gulf of Mexico
With the world’s focus on events in the Gulf of Mexico, a trio of Norwegian innovations are helping in the clean-up campaign. Sean Ottewell reports.
Con el suceso del Golfo de México bajo el punto de mira de todo el mundo, un terceto de innovaciones noruegas está ayudando en la campaña de limpieza. Informa Sean Ottewell.
Während die Welt auf die Ereignisse im Golf von Mexiko blickt, hilft ein norwegisches Innovationstrio bei den Reinigungsarbeiten. Ein Bericht von Sean Ottewell.
S
intef is the largest independent research organisation in Scandinavia and each year helps over 2000 companies in the region with their R&D
activities. Now its oil-spill researchers are helping the US authorities to estimate what happens to the oil that is leaking out into the Gulf of Mexico. “Te results of our calculations are helping the authorities to select measures to limit the overall environmental damage caused by the spill,” says research manager Mark Reed of Sintef Materials and Chemistry.
Te US authorities have decided to
employ dispersants on the oil-slicks in the Gulf of Mexico. Tese soap-like chemicals break the oil down into tiny droplets that then become mixed into the water column, before the oil reaches the shore. Most of the soap-like chemicals are released from aircraft flying over the oil- slicks on the surface. However, the blow-out in the Gulf of
Mexico is the first in which the clean-up teams are also injecting dispersant directly into the flow of oil and gas leaking out at the seabed. Tis is why Sintef was contacted.
“Te US environmental authorities are demanding evidence that spraying at the seabed is not producing undesirably high concentrations of oil in the water column, as far as fish and other marine organisms are concerned. Our calculations show that the concentrations in the water column will not be significantly higher than they would have been without injection of dispersant at the wellhead,” says Reed. “What we see, in fact, is that the oil in the water column becomes highly diluted, because the volumes and depths involved are so great in this part of the ocean. Te
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concentration of oil in the water column will be only slightly higher than it would have been in any case as a result of nature’s own ability to break the oil-slicks down into droplets. Since the difference is so small, we do not believe that the use of dispersants in the water column in the Gulf has made matters worse for fish and other marine organisms,” he added. According to the Sintef scientist, it
is more likely instead that the injection of dispersants at seabed level in this case has actually reduced the overall environmental impact of the spill. “Our calculations show that the dispersants added at seabed level have prevented large amounts of oil from reaching the shore in the form of oil- slicks, with all that these would mean for birds, for example. Te picture that we have arrived at via our calculations also matches observations of what has happened so far on the shores of the United States,” says Reed. However, Reed adds that the effects that such large quantities of dispersants deployed from aircraft could have on the concentration of oil in the water column is not currently being investigated. “Tat question lies outside our remit,
so we have not simulated their effects. Te dispersants have probably increased the concentration of oil in the upper layers of the water column. Whether it will remain high will depend on the weather conditions. Strong winds will tend to dilute the concentration in the upper layers.” Sintef was awarded its Gulf of Mexico contract by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is an arm of the US Department of Commerce. Meanwhile other Norwegian
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