Advanced Space Technology for Oil Spill Detection

Abstract

Environmental pollution, including oil spill is one of the major ecological problems. Negative human impacts demands to develop appropriate legislations within the national and international framework for marine and coastal environment as well as the onshore protection. Several seas, for instance the Mediterranean, the Baltic and the North Seas were declared as special areas where ship discharges are completely prohibited (Satellite Monitoring, LUKOIL).

In this regard environmental protection of the Caspian Sea has a priority status for Azerbaijan as a closed water basin ecosystem. This area, as a highly sensitive area in the World requires permanent ecological monitoring services where oil and gas from the subsurface of the Caspian Sea is developing almost more than a century. This status of the Caspian Sea is expected to be retention at least for the coming fifty years.

Remote sensing is a key instrument for successful response to the onshore and offshore oil spills impacts. There is an extreme need for timely recognition of the oil spilled areas with the exact place of location, extent of its oil contamination and verification of predictions of the movement and fate of oil slicks.

Black Sea region is expected to have a dramatic increase in the traffic of crude oil (mainly from the Caspian region). The main reason for these changes is the growth of oil industry in both Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. The real substantial changes in tanker movements and routs are not clear till now.

A necessity for a continuous observation of the marine environment comes afore when clarifying the tendencies of changes in the concentration of the particularly dangerous polluting substances as well as the behavior of different kinds of polluting substances in the detected area i.e., creation of a system for monitoring the pollution (L.A. Stoyanov and G.D. Balashov, UNISPACE III, Varna, Bulgaria).

The exploration of geological and oil production started in the shelf of the Caspian Sea a long time ago. The Caspian Sea is a highly sensitive region on ecological and biodiversity point of view. Oil dumps and emergency oil spill have an extremely bad influence on the marine and earth ecosystem and can lead to the ecological balance.

Certainly the general issue of oil and gas pipeline safety includes aspects of natural disasters and problems related to the environment. After successful construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and Baku-Tbilisi-Erzrum gas pipeline these aspects especially became very important for Azerbaijan and definitely, for the region. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Crude Oil Export Pipeline comprises a regional crude oil export transportation system, approximately 1750 in overall length.

Generally, oil spill monitoring in the offshore and onshore is carried out by means of specially equipped airborne, ships and satellites. Obviously, daylights and weather conditions limit marine and aerial surveillance of oil spills.