Industry: Offshore Oil and Gas

IMARES has a long history of environmental assessments for the offshore oil and gas industry.  Environmental assessments are carried out using existing models or developing state-of-the-art models; as well as through monitoring and surveys.

Our focus in research for the offshore oil and gas industries (and related authorities) is to identify and quantify the impacts of the various processes (exploration, drilling, production, abandonment) on the environment. All impacts are evaluated integratively to identify those impacts with the highest contribution to the overall environmental impact. Using this approach mitigating measures can be defined that will actually result in a reduction of the environmental impact (instead of only a reduction of emissions).

We have been working with and for both operators and authorities related to the offshore Exploration and Production of oil and gas. This relation dates from the late eighties and early nineties. IMARES (formerly TNO) performed key roles in the MONMIJ project (monitoring of OBM cutting piles on the Dutch Continental Shelf) and in the development of the HMCS and CHARM-model (Chemical Hazards Assessment and Management).

Since then, IMARES is regularly invited for advise and consultancy, as well as for extensive research studies. More recently, an extensive monitoring project (using passive samplers) was performed for the coast of Mauretania. We further developed the environmental impact assessment modules for the EIF (Environmental Impact Factor) that is being used for regular reporting by the Norwegian oil and gas industry.

Over the past 10 years, IMARES has made 15-20 EIA reports for exploration, drilling, production or decommissioning in the marine environment, viz. in areas of special ecological interest.