Oil spill risk management : modeling Gulf of Mexico circulation and oil dispersal / David E. Dietrich, Malcolm J. Bowman, Konstantin A. Korotenko, and M. Hamish E. Bowman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dietrich, D. (David), 1945- author.

Bowman, Malcolm J., author.

Korotenko, Konstantin A., author.

Bowman, M. Hamish E., author.

Contributor:

Wiley InterScience (Online service)

Christine Hikawa Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Oil pollution of the sea--Mexico, Gulf of--Simulation methods.

Oil pollution of the sea.

Simulation methods.

Diffusion in hydrology--Simulation methods.

Diffusion in hydrology.

Ocean circulation--Simulation methods.

Ocean circulation.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xv, 216 pages)

Place of Publication:

Hoboken, New Jersey : John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ; Salem, Massachusetts : Scrivener Publishing LLC, [2014]

System Details:

text file

Summary:

This book describes and applies state-of-the-art software designed to help balance cost and profit estimates against risk in the petrochemical industry using oil extracted from ocean bottom deposits. Though renewable energy is a growing piece of the energy "pie," fossil fuels still dominate our energy supplies and will continue to do so for decades. This makes offshore drilling, especially in places like the Gulf of Mexico and North Sea, extremely important for the future of the world's energy supply. Unfortunately, the world has been witnessing, over and over again, oil spills that could have been avoided had proper safety and environmental processes been put in place. Rather than wait for another mishap to occur, the authors of this groundbreaking volume have devised new, cutting-edge methods for mitigating risk against such accidents, while weighing the risks against costs. Oil Spill Risk Management is a major tool for petroleum engineers, operators, investors, insurers, environmentalists, and managers to provide guidelines for the economically and environmentally intensive issues involved. New approaches are used that advance modeling and prediction, and are of interest to the ocean and engineering scientific communities. The authors are motivated by the applicability of coupled state-of-the-art ocean and oil material transport models to hindcast and forecast the transport of oil spill material such as from the BP/Macondo well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. This includes suspended material in depths deeper than the Florida Strait sill level that is trapped in the Gulf of Mexico for decades to centuries due to earth rotation and buoyancy constraints, and material deposited on its bottom; this material escapes episodically in response to major storm events that break those constraints. A must for any engineer working in offshore risk management, this groundbreaking volume is an important tool that offers practical solutions to these very difficult, but timely, problems. Oil Spill Risk Management contains applications of a state-of-the-art ocean flow model coupled to a state-of-the-art oil spill model in order to: simulate and illustrate geophysical fluid dynamics relevant to transport of blowout material, including bottom deposited and deeply suspended material that is appropriate for ecosystem risk assessment, better demonstrate simulation of the BP/Macondo blowout material transport over any other model, assess oil spill initialization and predictability-a first in ocean modeling, assess risk for strong currents that may threaten oil rigs at specified sites, which is of major value to oil rig engineers, operators, and investors Book jacket.

Contents:

Part 1 Applied Oil Spill Modeling (with applications to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill) 1

1 The 2010 Deep Water Horizon and 2002 Supertanker Prestige Accidents 3

1.1 Introduction 3

1.2 The Oil Spills Described 5

1.3 How Much Material Remains in the Gulf? 6

1.4 The Role of Ocean Models to Explain what Happened 7

References 8

2 Gulf of Mexico Circulation 9

2.1 General Characteristics 9

2.2 Exchanges at Lateral and Surface Boundaries 11

2.3 Loop Current Eddies 12

2.4 Blocking by the Pycnocline 13

2.5 Fate of the Deepwater Horizon Well Blowout Material 14

2.6 Summary 15

References 16

3 Geophysical Fluid Dynamics and Modeling Challenges 17

3.1 Modeling the Circulation and Mixing of the Gulf Waters 17

3.2 External Boundaries 18

3.3 Addressing the Water Column Contamination and Fluxes 18

3.4 Effects of Bottom Dynamics on Accumulated Hydrocarbons 20

3.5 Churning by Extreme Weather Events 20

3.6 Summary 21

References 22

4 Flow and Oil Transport Model Choices, Setup and Testing 23

4.1 The DieCAST Ocean Circulation Model 23

4.2 Korotenko Oil Transport Module KOTM 24

4.3 Gulf Modeling Approach 25

4.4 Model Vertical Eddy Viscosity and Diffusivity 25

4.5 Surface Wind Driving and Open Boundary Conditions 26

4.6 Comments on Modeling Equatorial Dynamics and the Gulf of Mexico 26

4.7 Modeling Multi-Century Gulf Currents 27

References 29

5 Modeling the 2010 DWH Oil Spill 31

5.1 Introduction: the BP/Deepwater Horizon Accident 31

5.2 Deep water Blowouts: Processes Affecting the Transport and Fate of Oil throughout the Water Column 32

5.2.1 Crude Oil Composition 33

5.2.2 Characteristics of Macondo crude oil 36

5.2.3 Subsea Oil Plumes 40

5.2.4 Surface oil slicks 44

5.3 Oil Spill Model for Gulf of Mexico (GOSM) 57

5.3.1 Circulation sub-model for the Gulf of Mexico 58

5.3.2 Description of the GOSM 59

5.3.3 Wind and Wave Forcing 62

5.3.4 GOSM Setup 64

5.4 Results and Discussion 68

5.4.1 Modeling the GoM Circulation 69

5.4.2 Trajectory Modeling 73

5.4.3 Ensemble Modeling 77

5.5 Summary 82

References 86

Part 2 Special Topics in Oil Spill Modeling 95

6 DieCAST Model Origin and Development 97

6.1 Introduction 97

6.2 Recent Model Attributes 98

6.3 Challenges in Modeling the Gulf of Mexico Circulation 99

6.4 Complications of Modeling near-Equatorial Circulation 99

6.5 Non Hydrostatic Effects 101

6.6 Sponge Layers in the Global Model 101

6.7 Inflow Considerations 101

References 102

7 Brief History of the Community Ocean Modeling System (COMS) 105

7.1 COMS history 105

7.2 Background and motivations 106

7.3 COMS elliptic solver history 107

7.4 Evolution of DieCAST 108

7.5 Outlook 108

References 110

8 DieCAST Model Equations 113

8.1 Model Equations 113

8.2 Model Layer Depths 115

References 116

9 Some Basic Physical, Mathematical and Modeling Concepts 117

9.1 Buoyancy, Density and the Hydrostatic Approximation 117

9.2 Pycnocline Slope: Geopotential Surface as a Natural Vertical Coordinate 119

9.3 Rotation and Coriolis Terms 120

9.4 Pycnocline and the Florida Strait Sill Depth 121

9.5 Surface and Bottom Mixed Layers 121

References 122

10 Modeling Challenges, Validations and Animations 125

10.1 Incompressibility, Geostrophy, Data Assimilation and Initialization Issues 125

10.2 Thermocline Maintenance, Ventilation and Extreme Events 127

10.3 Nesting, Grid Coupling and Open Boundary Conditions 127

10.4 Validation of Simulated Major Current Patterns in the Gulf 127

10.5 Note on Data Assimilation 133

10.6 Gulf Circulation Animations 134

10.7 Animation 1 134

10.8 Animation 2 135

10.9 Animation 3 136

References 136

11 A Five-Century Gulf Simulation using DieCAST 139

11.1 Motivation 139

11.2 Basic Flow Patterns 140

11.3 Some Results Observed during the 5th Century 142

11.4 Internal Waves 143

11.5 Island /Headland Wake Effects in the Yucatan Channel 143

11.6 Deeply Suspended and Bottom Deposited Material 144

References 145

12 Extreme Events and Oil Rig Stability 147

12.1 Introduction 147

12.2 An Unusual Northern Gulf Eddy Event 148

12.3 Detailed Discussion of Run A 148

12.4 Some Comments 151

12.5 Other Extreme Events Found during the 500-year simulation 152

References 153

13 Initialization and Data Assimilation; MAM Procedure 155

13.1 Introduction 155

13.2 Preliminary Comment 156

13.3 MAM Procedure 156

13.4 Refinements, Variations, Generalizations and Specializations of the MAM Approach 158

References 160

14 On the Simulation of Density Currents by z-level Models 161

14.1 Motivation 161

14.2 Introduction 162

14.3 Analysis 164

14.4 Summary and Conclusion 167

14.5 Acknowledgements 168

References 168.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Electronic reproduction. Hoboken, N.J. Available via World Wide Web.

Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on October 8, 2014).

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Christine Hikawa Fund.

Other Format:

Print version: Dietrich, D. Oil spill risk management

ISBN:

9781119028024

1119028027

9781119027911

1119027918

Publisher Number:

99960457155

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.