The Arctic presents a large number of challenges for the oil and gas industry. From an HSE standpoint, there are the low-temperature work environment; the need to transport people, equipment, and supplies over great and relatively uninhabited distances; darkness; and the need to provide a safe means of evacuation in the case of an emergency.

From a construction standpoint, contending with freezing temperatures, icing, and ice loads are the primary concerns.

There is no easy solution to any one of these issues. Collectively, they pose a formidable challenge.

Arctic appeal
According to Steven Kopits, managing director of Douglas-Westwood, New York, “The word ‘arctic’ is a term apart in the oil and gas business.” Instead of identifying a true geographical region, the word describes an area that is characterized by extremely harsh weather conditions, including ice. This definition means E&P activity being carried out offshore Norway as well as those offshore the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador fall into the category of arctic operations.

Icebergs are one of the many threats to Arctic operations. (Image courtesy of DNV)

With that definition in place, it is possible to identify more than 400 oil and gas fields that lie in arctic territory. Those fields, according to Kopits, hold an estimated 240 Bboe.

Meanwhile, a 2008 report issued by the US Geological Survey quantifies reserves within the Arctic Circle at 90 Bbbl of oil, 1,669 Tcf of natural gas, and 44 Bbbl of natural gas liquids, of which approximately 84% is offshore.

With this much oil and gas at stake, the industry has enormous incentive to find a way to safely and efficiently produce arctic fields.

Technology landscape
Roger Basu, director corporate shared technology and head of Arctic programs at the American Bureau ofShipping (ABS), believes one of the main technology challenges today is working out the ice loads for offshore structures.

Floating structures have to be able to withstand ice forces that typically exceed the forces exerted by waves, wind, and current. In the Arctic, the ice load generally is the designing load. Ice exerts forces on the platform, and those forces vary based on the thickness, speed, age, and strength of ice, which can be in the form of level sea ice, ice ridges, and icebergs.

One “traditional source of information” for ice loads is the data gathered from a few offshore structures that were installed in what Basu referred to as the “First Ice Age,” which took place in the mid-1980s. “Measurements from these projects are the main source of information used to calibrate models that we derive using engineering principles,” he said.

There is a staffing challenge throughout the oil and gas industry, and that challenge is compounded in the Arctic by the remote and harsh working environment. (Image courtesy of DNV)

The other source is model scale tests that can be done in ice tanks. “There are not many of these in the world.The tank at the National Research Council (NRC) in St. John’s, Newfoundland, is one of the main ones,” Basu said. Although it is not doing so now, ABS has worked with this facility in the past.

“I think the really new thing, at least in this context, is numerical methods,” Basu said. “These are computer-based models that are used to simulate ice structure interactions. That’s what I would say is the big new thing on the horizon. People have been working on these for at least a decade or so, but they are starting to become practical for our use to come up with reasonable ice loads estimates.”

A third significant consideration, Basu said, is ice management. “Certainly for drilling projects and for some production projects, you do have to have ice management in place where you’re trying to control the environment around the installation.”

Icing over can cause problems for workers in Arctic regions. (Image courtesy of DNV)

Abdel Ghoneim, senior principal engineer at DNV, agrees in principle with Basu’s assessment. His concern is that although progress is being made on many fronts, the efforts have not been evaluated and assessed as a whole.

“Arctic development is technologically feasible, but the different technologies needed are at very different stages. It is feasible for us to start working there,” Ghoneim said, “but for true progress to be made, these challenges have to be approached as a system.”

Ghoneim has identified 20 arctic challenges that have to be addressed and has ranked them on a percentage scale in terms of the amount of progress the industry has made to date, with 100 representing full industry readiness. The majority of the challenges he enumerated are structural because this is his area of specialization, but there are additional issues that go beyond the physical ability of structures to work safely in the Arctic. “This is my own assessment,” he said.

“Some of the areas of investigation are much further along than others,” Ghoneim said, noting some in which progress has been considerable. Icing, for example, and ultimate strength of hull structures are rated at 90.

While it is important to bring these areas of technology to completion, it is more important to address the areas in which significant work is needed.

When asked to list the top five areas for research, Ghoneim listed technologies from both the upper and lower ranking in his “Top 20.” He named low-temperature designs for drilling and production system operations as number one and year-round ice management as number two in terms of importance for the industry.

When the NRC team carried out lifeboat tests in icy lake waters, they discovered the craft was underpowered and not particularly maneuverable. (Image courtesy of the National Research Council of Canada)

The third area he identified was structural design. “A lot of work has been done on this,” he said. “I think we are 80% of the way to finding solutions.” Concentrating efforts on this area could get the industry all the way there.

Number four on the list is risk analysis and accident preparedness, which he ranks at just 30% in terms of readiness. “This is an area where the industry is lacking. The $1 billion being spent now after the Macondo incident in the Gulf of Mexico will result in preparedness that I believe will be helpful in developing similar plans in the Arctic.”

Number five is crew qualification and training. The personnel challenge is compounded by the remote and harsh working environment in the Arctic. The industry as a whole is having staffing difficulties, Ghoneim pointed out, explaining, “When you add the elements of ice and darkness into the equation, you complicate the staffing issue considerably. It is a very tough environment to work in. Attracting the best and brightest is going to be extremely difficult.” Regulations, the environment

Although the physical challenges are formidable, there are other issues that will be obstacles for companies that want to move into the Arctic. According to Basu, the very different regulatoryenvironments that exist in the countries that have acreage in the Arctic – Russia, Norway, the US, Greenland, and Canada – poses a hurdle for operators.

In general, Basu said, “The permitting environment is more challenging now than it was in the First Ice Age 25 years ago. For one thing, we’re more concerned about the environment than we were before.”

Increased environmental concerns have resulted in more stringent expectations for operating companies. “We need to be concerned about the environmental footprint of these operations. If you’ve got – let me exaggerate to make a point – five icebreakers providing ice management services, they use up a lot of fuel, so they’re pumping a lot of air emissions into the atmosphere. That’s something people worry about and something companies will have to contend with.”

Escape, evacuation, and rescue (EER) is another “big, big challenge,” according to Basu. “It’s hard enough in open water, but once you get into the Arctic where it’s very remote, coming up with an EER system that ensures the safety of personnel is a challenge. You have to be able to convince the agency that is going to give you permission to work in the area that you have a good system in place to protect people and to rescue them in the case of an emergency.”

In fact, EER is the subject of considerable research at present.

Safety at sea
According to António Simões Ré, who is heading the group at the NRC that is investigating EER, today’s lifeboats are a particular concern for Arctic operations.

Simões Ré, senior research engineer at the Institute for Ocean Technology in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, says lifeboats that work in arctic envi- ronments need considerably different capabilities from those that operate in benign climates. His group has been working for several years on this problem, and that work has paid off considerably in the past two years in particular, Simões Ré said.

Initial investigation identified problems with the evacuation craft, which led to critical questions, the most significant of which was, “Is fiberglass safe to go into the Arctic?”

In other words, Simões Ré said, “From an engineering point of view, we tried to determine if this is the right material. The second question we wanted to answer is how fast the craft could go safely through an ice field.”

The desire to answer those two questions was the foundation for the research program that followed.

“We did quite a bit of work, including laboratory tests where we actually impacted a piece of ice under conditions where the exact speed was known so we could calculate the force the material had to withstand. We performed a lot of standard material tests (e.g., destructive testing of fiberglass panels) to find out the adequacy of fiberglass as a construction material for Arctic and sub-Arctic regions and, for example, the consequences of cycling between hot and cold temperatures with regard to fiberglass material properties.”

That approach led the team to consider using different materials. “What would happen, for example, if we made the fiberglass tougher?” Simões Ré asked. That query spurred Simões Ré and his team to investigate S-glass, “the stuff that you make bulletproof vests out of.” In very simple terms, Simões Ré explained, S-glass is a purer type of glass than regular fiberglass, which means that it is stronger.

A closer inspection of the operational performance of the lifeboat design revealed that it was underpowered and not particularly maneuverable.

In 2010, when the team carried out extensive testing on lifeboat shape and functionality, it became clear that the propulsion system was not designed for the shape of the hull, which meant that the vessels had inadequate maneuverability and powering. “Without sufficient power, it isn’t possible for the evacuation craft to contend with ice. Instead of making its way efficiently to safety, the vessel would end up meandering through the ice field,” Simões Ré explained.

Improvements followed, with the team designing a suitable propeller and nozzle for the lifeboat. Due to the costs associated with manufacturing a specialty propeller and nozzle, the team decided to check the market for substitutes that had the majority of the characteristics ofthe redesigned system.

“In the short term, we wanted to increase the thrust, which we believed we could do if we designed the propeller and nozzle properly,” Simões Ré said. Modifications resulted in a 100% increase in thrust for an investment of less than 5% of the lifeboat value. Another thing we looked at was navigation, which was very difficult using the gyro compasses traditionally used on lifeboats. Our solution was to buy a marine GPS at a relatively modest cost.”

In addition to the engineering questions, the team was concerned with the ergonomics within the vessel and how they would impact personnel.

“We began to quantify the environment inside the lifeboat,” he said. “In the past, we only had a few sensors. Now, we have arrays of sensors that allow us to look at CO, CO, light levels, and noise levels, not just in a few spots, but distributed along the lifeboat.”

Knowing what personnel in the lifeboat can feel allows designers to make more precise improvements. “We know that the people in the stern might be exposed to different COlevels than the people at the bow, and that led us to look more closely at the vessel habitability.”

The great thing about these modifications, he said, is that they can be done at a very low cost and they can be done on evacuation craft that is in the field.With all of the progress that has been made, Simões Ré believes there is still a long way to go. “What we are finding is that all of these concerns have to be addressedbefore safe deployment of evacuation craft can be carried out further north. I think specially designed crafts will have to address the extremely harsh conditions in this area.”

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