Ice Monitoring Program in Support of Sakhalin Energy’s Offshore Oil Production

Since the summer of 1999, Sakhalin Energy Investment Company (SEIC) has been producing oil at the Molikpaq platform in 30m of water 15km off the east coast of Sakhalin Island. The paper in this conference by Reed (2006) covers the project description, the paper by Keinonen et al (2006b) covers the operations in ice and risk management, and Tambovsky et al (2006) covers the environmental conditions, in more detail. The monitoring program described in this paper has been specifically designed to provide extensive ice and environmental data to support the risk management and allow the planning of safe oil production operations using a Single Anchor Leg Mooring (SALM), Floating Storage and Offloading System (FSO), and export tankers in ice. The paper covers two major aspects of the in-ice operations: Ice management to protect the offshore loading operation on a minute by minute basis in moving ice, and also ice forecasting, to determine when any unmanageable ice might approach the tanker loading site and cause the shut down of operations in the fall and during the startup of operations in the spring. The forecasting of ice drift, ice formation and growth in the fall and ice decay in the spring are discussed. Also discussed is the forecasting of episodic events that are unique to the NE coast of Sakhalin Island.