| 2006-10-19 | To bloggers |
Oil & gas industry environmental footprint as seen from space
On 20 September 2006, representatives from ScanEx R&D Center and NGO Transparent World took part in a seminar on environmental issues in the oil and gas industry that was organized by TNK-BP, the second largest oil and gas company in Russia.
During the meeting, results of the first year of the “Landscape Impact Assessment of the Oil and Gas Industry in Russia” Project were discussed. This project is being conducted by the World Resources Institute (WRI) in partnership with Russian environmental NGOs and with the financial and technical support of TNK-BP. Transparent World joined this partnership along with WWF-Russia and Greenpeace-Russia. The three-year project will result in the development of an independent assessment protocol of the oil and gas extraction footprint on landscapes across Russia. The protocol will rely on information that is available in the public domain, primarily satellite imagery.
During his presentation of the project's interim results, Transparent World Deputy Director, Dmitry Aksenov, outlined possibilities of mapping the oil and gas infrastructure and impacts on intact forest areas using middle-scale images, mainly Landsat, Terra/Aster and SPOT. Spatial impacts include, inter alia, areas affected by oil spills (automatic interpretation of residual oil spills on Landsat ETM+ images was made using ScanEx NeRIS software), areas of degraded vegetation and secondary or knock-on effects, such as forest fires and clear-cuts. In forest and forest-steppe areas with previous development, the oil and gas extraction footprint is usually masked by other types of economic activities. However, the footprint can be estimated using higher resolution images, such as IRS and EROS.
A field survey that was conducted in the Samotlor oil field area in August 2006 revealed that middle resolution satellite image interpretation can significantly reduce the costs of inventorying oil-polluted areas through ground surveys. To delineate the polluted areas, the project team used SPOT images received by the ScanEx R&D Center ground station in July 2006.
Other applications of remote sensing data were also described during the presentation, including updating field development maps, prioritizing remediation activities and assessing their efficiency and visualizing different scenarios of new development projects.
Besides the project team, representatives of several other leading environmental NGOs took part in the seminar, including the International Social Ecological Union (ISEU), Biodiversity Conservation Center (BCC) and «Zapovedniki» Environmental Education Center, as well as the Moscow State University Soil Science Department that developed a new corporate technical standard for remediation for TNK-BP. Specialists from the Health, Safety and Environment (HSE), Public Relations and Upstream Departments in TNK-BP and BP also attended.
TNK-BP Vice-President for HSE, Evgeny Bulgakov, confirmed the company's interest in providing further financial support to the development of the project.
More information on this project is available at www.transparentworld.ru.
During the meeting, results of the first year of the “Landscape Impact Assessment of the Oil and Gas Industry in Russia” Project were discussed. This project is being conducted by the World Resources Institute (WRI) in partnership with Russian environmental NGOs and with the financial and technical support of TNK-BP. Transparent World joined this partnership along with WWF-Russia and Greenpeace-Russia. The three-year project will result in the development of an independent assessment protocol of the oil and gas extraction footprint on landscapes across Russia. The protocol will rely on information that is available in the public domain, primarily satellite imagery.
During his presentation of the project's interim results, Transparent World Deputy Director, Dmitry Aksenov, outlined possibilities of mapping the oil and gas infrastructure and impacts on intact forest areas using middle-scale images, mainly Landsat, Terra/Aster and SPOT. Spatial impacts include, inter alia, areas affected by oil spills (automatic interpretation of residual oil spills on Landsat ETM+ images was made using ScanEx NeRIS software), areas of degraded vegetation and secondary or knock-on effects, such as forest fires and clear-cuts. In forest and forest-steppe areas with previous development, the oil and gas extraction footprint is usually masked by other types of economic activities. However, the footprint can be estimated using higher resolution images, such as IRS and EROS.
A field survey that was conducted in the Samotlor oil field area in August 2006 revealed that middle resolution satellite image interpretation can significantly reduce the costs of inventorying oil-polluted areas through ground surveys. To delineate the polluted areas, the project team used SPOT images received by the ScanEx R&D Center ground station in July 2006.
Other applications of remote sensing data were also described during the presentation, including updating field development maps, prioritizing remediation activities and assessing their efficiency and visualizing different scenarios of new development projects.
Besides the project team, representatives of several other leading environmental NGOs took part in the seminar, including the International Social Ecological Union (ISEU), Biodiversity Conservation Center (BCC) and «Zapovedniki» Environmental Education Center, as well as the Moscow State University Soil Science Department that developed a new corporate technical standard for remediation for TNK-BP. Specialists from the Health, Safety and Environment (HSE), Public Relations and Upstream Departments in TNK-BP and BP also attended.
TNK-BP Vice-President for HSE, Evgeny Bulgakov, confirmed the company's interest in providing further financial support to the development of the project.
More information on this project is available at www.transparentworld.ru.
