SERPENT of the Deep - Best Practices in Research, Monitoring and Partnerships for a Deepwater Well off Atlantic Canada.

d'Entremont, Andre (Chevron - CCL - UP)

OnePetro 

Abstract The Great Barasway F-66 well - operated by Chevron Canada Limited (CCL) on behalf of itself and co-venturers ExxonMobil Canada Ltd., Imperial Oil Resource Ventures Ltd. and Shell Canada Limited - was the first Canadian participation in the international SERPENT Project. It was drilled in the Orphan Basin, a remote deepwater area located 390 km offshore of St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. SERPENT utilizes Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs), which support deepwater drilling operations, to collect scientific data which would be prohibitively expensive or impractical for universities or research institutions to collect. The project was a cooperative effort between CCL, ExxonMobil Canada Ltd., Imperial Oil Resource Ventures Ltd., Shell Canada Limited, and Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN), the University of Southampton, the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board. This has been an open and transparent relationship whereby all parties were involved in the study design, and data collected was freely shared. Initial results have included 1,000 world class digital photographs and over 25 hours of video of the organisms that live in water depths of 2,338 m. Initial results have been scientifically exciting; expanding the range of two species of fish, there is also the prospect that a new species of deepwater organism could be discovered once the data are fully analyzed. The extent of the settlement of cuttings and drilling muds was also mapped and compared to predictions made in the environmental assessment. Experiments were also conducted to evaluate the potential settlement of deepwater corals and other organisms on different types of hard substrate. Introduction The deep sea is one of our planet's least explored frontiers. Comparatively little is known of deep water areas, in spite of the fact that 76% of all the water in the oceans is found at depths greater than 200 metres. The study of deep-sea organisms can be logistically difficult and prohibitively expensive, especially for universities and most research institutions. There are simply not enough resources available to the oceanographic community to study deep-sea life. The entire North American academic ROV deepwater fleet consists of only eight systems, of which only one (ROPOS - Remotely Operated Platform for Ocean Science) has been recently used by marine scientists off Atlantic Canada. Conversely, the offshore oil and gas industry is the largest user of deepwater ROVs in the world, with an estimated 600 ROVs, many of which are capable of working in waters 2,000 to 3,000 m deep. One of these industrial ROVs was made available as part of a drilling program in the Orphan Basin, Canada, located approximately 390 km northeast of St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador (see Figure 1). Given its harsh climate and distance from shore, the area can also be considered under explored from both an ecological and an oil and gas perspective. CCL and its co-venturer particpants, ExxonMobil Canada Ltd., Imperial Oil Resource Ventures Ltd. and Shell Canada Limited acquired eight deepwater licenses covering 2.1 million hectares in January 2004. Water depths range from 500 to 3,500 metres, with the majority of the licenses characterized by depths of between 2,000 and 3,000 metres. The average sea surface temperatures in the Orphan Basin range from 2.8 degrees centigrade in March to 12.2 degrees centigrade in August, with an average temperature at the sea bottom of 3degrees centigrade.

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