Monitoring and Assessment of the Marine Environment – background and key developments

Offshore hydrocarbon exploration and production activities result in a range of sources of potential environmental effects; the sources of these effects have been evaluated by numerous studies and allow priority issues to be identified.

UK Government has an obligation under both domestic legislation and policy, and international agreements to understand the status and health of its marine environment in order to manage current and future use more effectively and to identify areas and activities where remediation of past misuse may be needed.

Oil & Gas UK contributes to this understanding through annual seabed surveys. The emphasis of these surveys has changed from the traditional site specific to wide area surveys designed to assess and monitor trends in contamination in both seabed sediments and biota. These surveys are undertaken in close cooperation with Government to ensure that they deliver the data required for quality status reports.

Oil & Gas UK also continues to monitor the outcomes of the OGP survey into the impacts of noise in the marine environment.

The Oil & Gas UK Evidence Review will form the basis for such a strategic approach; using this study as a gap analysis, we aim to direct our monitoring efforts towards areas where we currently have little information.

Where operators and developers are required to carry out investigatory studies to inform environmental assessments carried out in support of their proposed activities, it is hoped that the Oil & Gas UK Evidence review can be used as a tool for such information gathering.

For further information on the Oil & Gas UK Evidence Review, see
www.oilandgasuk.co.uk/issues/environment/index.cfm

Atlantic Frontier Environmental Network (AFEN) – background and key developments

The AFEN project is an industry led collaborative study into the area of the UKCS bordering the Atlantic Ocean. In the UK Atlantic Margin oil province, oil industry operators and government saw the opportunity to take a co-ordinated, strategic approach to environmental management. This novel and ground-breaking initiative allowed UKCS to set the trend for other emerging oil provinces.

This work has resulted in exciting new scientific discoveries and introduced more ambitious ways of working collaboratively with government and academia throughout UK waters. Notably, the AFEN project can be credited with the discovery of the Darwin Mounds and providing information on a number of new species. The network continues ongoing work on taxonomic research. Oil & Gas UK will play a role in the future of AFEN, namely as the facilitator between industry and other companies that have an interest in the area.

For more information please visit
http://www.ukooa.co.uk/issues/Afen