Scottish Marine and Freshwater Science Volume 5 Number 3: The Science of Deepwater Oil Spills - Results from the 2013 Marine Scotland Science Workshop

The Science of Deepwater Oil Spills
Workshop 1 - Modelling

Workshop Report

Introduction

A workshop on "The Science Of Deepwater Oil Spills - Modelling" was convened by Marine Scotland Science, Marine Laboratory Aberdeen, Scotland, 18-19 September 2013. The aim was to investigate the science needed to model a deep water accidental oil release in the region of the Scottish shelf break/Faroe Shetland Channel (here forth referred to collectively as FSC, unless specifically stated otherwise). This first workshop focused on the science needed to improve the modelling of a spill. Further workshops will focus on other aspects, including monitoring spills.

Oil exploration in UK waters is taking place at increasing depths, in areas of complex oceanographic and extreme environmental conditions such as the FSC. In the case of an environmental incident, numerical models are potentially critical tools to guide the monitoring and response effort. However, modelling the behaviour of oil spills at depth is still under development and current hydrodynamic models of these waters are not yet able to fully describe the complex oceanographic patterns observed.

The workshop was used to investigate the modelling capacity to respond to a deep water oil spill in the FSC.

The three specific workshop objectives were:

− To review the current state of the art modelling capacity, applicable to the FSC area.
− To identify knowledge gaps.
− To recommend future improvements and propose specific research topics.

The workshop only considered aspects directly relevant to modelling. It was organised into four themes:

1. Oceanography of the area.
2. Circulation modelling.
3. Dispersion modelling.
4. Processes affecting the behaviour of the oil, e.g. interaction with sediments, natural oil degradation and the science behind chemical dispersants and their effects.

Expressions of interest were invited from experts from relevant academic and research organisations, industry and industry bodies, consultancies and government departments.

Participants were organised into working tables. After each theme's presentations the working tables considered the aspects of "State of the Art", "Knowledge Gaps" and "Future Recommendations". A plenary session then gathered feedback from each table and these were recorded by the convenors. In "State of the Art", participants were asked to emphasize any particular issues shown in the presentations but also to identify areas of present knowledge not included in those, while "Knowledge Gaps" refer to aspects where our present knowledge is inadequate or non-existent. The division between what we know but was not presented at the workshop, what we do not know and what we should know is somewhat artificial and this is reflected in some degree of overlap between these categories in the notes taken of the discussions. In this report, however, we have attempted to re-organise the discussions based on the definition of these three categories, as defined above.

Acknowledgements

Marine Scotland Science, and the authors of this report, would like to acknowledge the expert contributions from the following participants to the workshop: