RIASSUNTO
Abstract
The Russian portion of the West Arctic Shelf (including the Barents Sea, Pechora Bay and Kara Sea) contains over 75 % (8.2 billion tons of reference fuel) of the proved hydrocarbon reserves of the whole Russian offshore. The Norwegian continental shelf also bears significant oil and gas reserves distributed among three big water areas: continental shelves of the North, Norwegian and Barents Seas (35 %, 36 % and 29 % respectively).
The recoverable hydrocarbon reserves of the Norwegian continental shelf according to the data from Norwegian Petroleum Directorate currently are estimated as 3.4 billion tons of reference fuel.
The West Arctic Shelf contains significant oil and gas reserves. Their uniqueness has already been proved through discovering gigantic gas fields such as Shtokman field in the Barents Sea, Rusanov and Leningrad ones in the Kara Sea, big Prirazlomnoe and Dolginskoe gas and oil fields in the Pechora Bay.
Hydrocarbon discoveries in the Norwegian sector of the Barents Sea have been made in Snovit oil and gas field and Goliath oil field. A comprehensive estimation of the geological and technical aspects of the environmental safety in hydrocarbon field exploration and operation requires long-term efforts from a big team of experts in different specialties. The author has made an attempt to briefly summarize the state of the problem and outline the ways to solve it.
Environment surveys showed that the West Arctic Basin is predominantly influenced by the cold and clean water of the Arctic Ocean. It helps bottom zone self-cleaning. Elevated concentrations of few pollutants have been recorded in the coastal zones of the Kola Peninsula. The benthic ecosystems are naturally unimpaired. Thus, the West Arctic Basin (except few little areas near the Kola Peninsula and Island of Novaya Zemlya) can be considered as an area practically unimpaired by man. Author participated in Caspian environment program as a national expert. He developed a conceptual scheme for environment inspection and monitoring on that territory. The difference between the northern seas and Caspian Sea is that the former are considerably less environmentally burdened. However, the experience of hydrocarbon production in the Gulf of Mexico connected to the world ocean showed that 30—120 tons of oil leaked into the sea during a single well operation. The most environmentally hazardous are force majeur situations - as seen from the BP oilrig fire in the Gulf of Mexico. It was at the stage of exploratory drilling. The wellhead was 1500 m deep, the well proper penetrated approximately 6 km down under the sea bottom. No one in the world has an experience of accident elimination at the depth of one and a half kilometer. 126 workers were on the platform at the moment of the accident. 11 of them died, other 17 workers were wounded.