Shell Arctic - Learning more about the Arctic's changing environment
Our focus is to listen to the stakeholders and understand their concerns.
We're also collecting environmental baseline data.
That's important for our environmental impact statement.
We're collecting scientific data that helps us ensure our designs are good.
Baseline studies help us understand the environment in which we're working.
It's looking at offshore, marine resources, the fisheries...
...the sea birds, the marine and coastal birds, looking at fisheries...
Not only in the near-shore environment, but also offshore, and marine mammals.
We're interested in the population health of polar bears, walrus...
...many of the ice-dependent seals and bowhead whales and beluga whales.
There are several activities that are under way.
We're conducting pipeline ice gouge...
...strudel scour and coastal erosion surveys. Information is important...
...because it will help us understand how deep these events occur...
...and it will help us on our pipeline design...
...to determine how deep it needs to be buried.
Geotechnical sampling requires a tube of soil.
To understand the soil conditions we drill boreholes to collect soil samples.
We test those soil samples in a lab to find out how strong the soil is.
We then get engineering parameters, which we can use for the design.
Some of the issues, when developing a pipeline route, are things like:
Do you go under a river crossing with a directional drill?
Or do you go over it with a pipeline bridge? Or do you...
...install that pipeline with an open cut, as opposed to a directional drill?
All this has to be factored into your design, into your route selection.
The only way you can do that very effectively is if you go out and obtain...
...site-specific data, site-specific knowledge.
Much of that knowledge comes from local people.
Local science sometimes provides some of that.
It's a culmination of all these inputs that helps you...
...develop the optimum solution.
February 2007 we initiated an activity: The data buoy deployment...
...to measure ice movements in the area of the Sivulliq prospect.
We employed personnel who had traditional knowledge of the environment.
They could scout an adequate location to land a helicopter safely on ice.
Also, we employed a bear hazer to address the hazard...
of potential for wildlife encounters, while the field crew was on the ice.
We hope next year to have a programme where we go out in the field.
From an icebreaker, or by helicopter, to access some multi-year ice.
Take some cores for mechanical and chemical testing.
We would also like to actually profile, actually survey these flows...
...so that we have a comprehensive understanding of their geometry...
...all the important dimensions.
There's also talk about taking an autonomous underwater vehicle...
...kind of an unmanned submarine, that could map the underside of the sea ice.
And that might give us a better appreciation...
...for what those dimensions are like and how they vary.
We're looking at using drones that can be dropped under ice...
...to collect data during winter to reduce the impact on that open water season.
There's been a lot of environmental monitoring in other parts of the world...
...associated with the oil and gas industry.
In the Arctic North it's a relatively new frontier.
A lot of that work hasn't been done. We're on the first stages of that...
...in terms of understanding oil and gas activities in relation to the environment.
And Shell is in the forefront of that.
This is very early to have a development team...
...addressing all of these issues and understanding them.
But it's recognition of what a real frontier area this is.
It's an extremely harsh environment. It's environmentally sensitive.
And there are a lot of stakeholder issues that we should listen to.
We must incorporate all these factors into developing a good, safe design.