First Time in Thailand: Ocean Data Platform Through the Use of Offshore Facilities

Abstract

The Ocean Data Platform project was initiated initiated since 2020 to support our aspiration to become the guardian of the Ocean. PTTEP (‘the Company’) aspires to take part in providing of marine science data around our offshore operation to the general public, as there is currently no offshore information available from Thailand. The data will be beneficial to ocean scientists, authorities, and could lead to the development of various ocean conservation programs and prediction model. This Ocean Data Platform is designed to collect the up-to-date and real-time offshore ocean health and biodiversity data in Gulf of Thailand (GoT) by leveraging our offshore location strengths, knowledge, and innovative technologies. To establish the real-time offshore data in our operation, met-ocean monitoring station and underwater camera are installed to automatically perform oceanographic measurements to identify biodiversity, species, and aquatic life. This platform will connect our offshore data with other nearshore and midshore data from other entities. They also have alert function to detect abnormal activity so they can investigate and notify relevant parties to take action if necessary. The Ocean Data Platform will be published to stakeholders and interested parties for further research through the websie (reference 4). This platform comprises of 3 main parts of oceanographic monitoring, Ocean for life initiatives and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) events such as offshore microplastic monitoring, underwater biodiversity around offshore platform, coral bleaching baseline, the His Thai Majesty's Ship (H.T.M.S) underwater learning site. This information allows us to mornitor the state of the ocean health in various aspects and analyze the causes of various phenomena such as, impact of greenhouse gases on the ocean, change in ocean water temperature, wave height in monsoon season, ocean acidity, and base of ocean water, etc. We could also use this information to design offshore facilities to optimize CAPEX costs in the future. In addition, this platform is also regarded as the starting point for consolidating all marine-related information into one platform to support Thailand ocean conservation program. This is the first development in Thailand that integrates offshore data with others to complete ocean data in a holistic manner and allows researchers interested in the ocean to effectively use this type of data in their research.