Issue 18. 16 November 2009.pdf - UWA Staff - The University of ...

SERPENT probes the deep
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Existing iNdustrial Technology. In
Australia, the project is dubbed SEA
SERPENT (for South East Asia) and the
Chief Investigator at UWA is Winthrop
Professor Chari Pattiaratchi from the
School of Environmental Systems
Engineering.
While his project colleagues are
discovering some weird and wonderful
creatures that inhabit the deep water,
Professor Pattiaratchi looks at the
physical side of drilling in this
environment.
“We are studying the water column
structure (changes in temperature,
salinity and oxygen content) and the
seabed (looking at the current and
sediment transport),” he said.
“When companies drill through the
earth under the sea, whether it’s for
exploration or production, they discharge
back into the ocean whatever they drill
out. It is not just earth, because they use
chemicals for lubricants and in cooling
the drills.
“We want to find out what the impact of
this ‘drill spoil’ is on species which live in
the deep waters. How far does it move?
Does it move once it has settled on the
sea bed?
“This is quite a new phenomenon
because of the depth. In shallower water,
strong currents will disperse the drill spoil
quickly and it will have little effect. But
we don’t know what happens at greater
depths.”
SEA SERPENT, a collaboration between
UWA, the University of Sydney, University
of Technology Sydney and the University
of Wollongong, started as an ARC
linkage project with $800,000. Chevron
has recently given the consortium more
than $1 million for the next three years,
for research related to its Gorgon
project. Other major sponsors are
Woodside, Santos and Inpex.
“It has been about five years since we
signed an MOU together,” Professor
Pattiaratchi said. “We actually started
going offshore to collect data a couple of
years ago.”
His group includes a PhD student,
Saif Farooqui, who started this year, and
an Honours student, Sanjeewa
Senanayake. While their research is
focused on the north-west, other groups
in SEA SERPENT are working in the
Southern Ocean and Bass Strait.
All the projects use the ROVs that are
owned by the resource companies and
are attached to every drilling platform.
They are used for routine maintenance
on the rig and are always on standby for
emergencies. So, for more than half the
time, they are lying idle on the surface, a
resource that is ideal for scientific
research.
“Australia has just one dedicated
research vessel, so this is a great
opportunity to do research from the
platforms, using the ROVs and their
technology, to help us understand and
record what’s going on down there,”
Professor Pattiaratchi said.
In a report in AIR magazine, Mark
McCallum, deputy CEO of the Australian
Petroleum Production and Exploration
Association, said his members were
backing the work because they needed
to understand more about the oceans,
even if there was a risk that the scientific
findings would not be to their liking.
“We can use the knowledge to better
plan, time and execute our projects with
lower environmental impact,” he said.
Honours student Kate Swain, supervised
by Professor Pattiaratchi last year,
conducted studies on the turbulence
generated close to the sea bed at well
sites near Exmouth.
She gathered data on sediment
resuspension due to turbulence in low
current environments.
“These studies revealed valuable data on
how drill spoil deposits change with time
in the deep sea,” Professor Pattiaratchi
said.
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UWA NEWS 16 November 2009
The University of Western Australia