Iran To Sue BP Over Caspian Oil Spill

Tehran, Jan 28, IRNA – Deputy Head of Department of Environment (DoE), Abdolreza Karbasi, says Iran will lodge a complaint with international triunals in case of continued pollution of the Caspian Sea by BP, which is in charge of oil exploration and extraction in Azerbaijan Republic. Karbasi said instead of injecting oil wastages into 6,000 wells, BP is currently dumping them into the Caspian Sea waters. He said due to oil spills in the Caspian Sea by Azerbaijan, no hope remains for survival of sea creatures in the sea. He noted that over the past few years, the southern coastlines of the Caspian Sea were covered by oil spills with the last case of such incidents happening four months ago when 25 tons of spills were c;eared from Iranian coastlines. Results of the first stage of the oil pollution satellite-based monitoring project in northern part of the Caspian Sea carried out in May 2011 are now available. The project was performed by ScanEx Research and Development Center upon the request of the Lukoil – Nizhnevolzhskneft company. Monitoring was conducted to detect films of oil on the water surface of Northern Caspian Sea, and to define possible sources of such pollution at the buildup and operational stages of the Korchagin oil field. Local Internet-technology on multi-satellite monitoring (ScanNet), created at ScanEx RDC, is used to ensure fast and reliable detection of oil spills and to define their sources. Principal elements of such technology are as follows:- short revisit period (average imaging interval is more than once in two days), using two radar satellites: RADARSAT-1 (Canada) and ENVISAT (ESA)— direct reception of satellite images in Russia with automatic processing in near real-time, which reduces costs and increases operability— complex use of images received by optical and radar satellites— operational submission of results to the customer via web-services. To ensure high operability a round-the-clock radar image reception and processing cycle was arranged at the Moscow center of ScanEx RDC. This provides the customer with information concerning the detection of oil spills within the monitored area with minimum time delay. Satellite data, after thematic processing and analysis in near real-time is provided to the Lukoil – Nizhnevolzhskneft company specialists via the Kosmosnimki – Lukoil web-service, which is based on the Russian-made GeoMixer web-engine. Within only six months – from February 1 to August 1 – 103 sessions of operational satellite radar imaging of the Caspian Sea water area was done, with 57 RADARSAT-1 images (spatial resolution - 50 m) and 46 ENVISAT images (150 m) were acquired and processed.In addition, to ensure high frequency monitoring of the condition of the Caspian Sea northern water areas, optical multispectral low resolution images are used (MODIS sensors of Terra and Aqua satellites), as well as middle resolution images of Landsat-5 (USA) and SPOT 4/5 (France), and highly-detailed images of EROS A/B satellites (Israel). In all, over 90 SPOT 4/5 images have been received for the period over review (resolutions - 2,5 to 20 m), as well as Lands at 5 (30 m) and 6 EROS A/B images (1,9 and 0,7 m respectively). Multispectral SPOT and Lands at 5 images were used to detect the nature of some of the surface pollution. During the freeze-up radar images and those of MODIS sensor were used to assess the general ice situation and to monitor the dynamics of the ice cover. Finally, to assess ecological situation of sea surface generation of three types of products, received by MODIS data processing using SeaDAS software complex, occurs on a daily basis: maps of chlorophyll concentration, suspended solid material concentration and sea surface temperature. In late February 2011 formation of ice cover completed in northern part of the Caspian Sea, including the area of main Korchagin oil field production facility location. Ice cover was quite dynamic – position of the edge of consolidated ice changed dramatically through the time and space. Human-induced oily films were marked on 26 radar images. The satellite images analysis revealed that no oil pollution, related to production activities at the facilities of the fuel and energy complex of the Lukoil – Nizhnevolzhskneft” company, was detected at the “Severny” license area. Oily films that were detected near the license areas were not related to the production activities at the oil field, which fact was confirmed by the results of the operational modeling, executed using “ScanDrifter” software application. The main part of detected pollutions appeared as a result of ship dumps of oil-polluted waters, having typical shapes and located near the shipping routes. Thus for example, the largest spill of 69 square km was detected in Russian sector at distance of 115 km south of license areas. Some satellite images also show ships, involved in pollution. According to geospatial analysis data, most oily films in Russian and Kazakh sectors of the Caspian Sea were grouped along shipping routes, leading to Astrakhan Roads and to the Caspian Canal and at the approach ways to the ports of Aktau, Atyrau, Makhachkala, etc. To calculate the transition of solid oil pollution matter during the monitoring, the model of oil pollution drifting “ScanDrift” form ScanEx was used. It was adapted to suit the hydro-meteorological conditions of the Northern Caspian. It operates in near real-time to calculate the trajectory of the drift of the spill both by actual data and to provide a 72 hours forecast. As a result of satellite-based monitoring of the sea surface, no oil pollution, related to production facilities of the Lukoil – Nizhnevolzhskneft company, was detected, which is the outcome from the implementation of the “zero dump” technology and efficient measures of environmental and industrial safety at the Korchagin oil field. Most cases of the sea surface pollution was due to the dumps of oil-polluted water from ships. The detected cases of human-induced pollution of the sea surface had no crucial impact on the environmental situation of the Northern Caspian.“The high frequency of controlled imaging ensures reliable control of license areas and neighboring zones, high probability of pollution detection, possibility to monitor the slick drifting dynamics and to detect fact of sea surface pollution, caused by oil spills transferred from outside to the license area under the influence of hydro-meteorological factors,” said Natalya Filimonova The Department Head of Maritime Operational Monitoring. “The results of satellite-based monitoring proved the efficiency of industrial and environmental safety measures taken at the Korchagin oil field in the Caspian Sea,” remarked Olga Zornikova the Leading Environmental Specialist from Lukoil – Nizhnevolzhskneft./end