Theme 1: Maritime safety and security
Theme 3: Marine energy resources/Offshore oil and gas


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For several years, oil and gas industry stakeholders have been voicing a need for tools to model leaks at offshore wells. The Deepwater Horizon platform accident in 2010 confirmed the importance of expert understanding of undersea phenomena and the effect they have at the surface. METANE – ‘Modelling undErwater gas/oil blowouT And lNg lEak’ – involves developing such a decision-making support tool based on the industrial risks associated with a subsea leak of oil, natural gas or LNG.

The ultimate aim is to offer an advanced, three-dimensional visualisation tool for drawing up prevention plans and managing post-accident disasters. Subsea exploration involves acknowledged industrial risks to staff, equipment and the environment. Ruptures in well heads or risers can cause bubbles of gas to rise to the ocean’s surface, reducing in buoyancy and, being inflammable, posing a risk of explosion or fire. They can even, in the case of wells containing sulphurous products, be potentially toxic. In the case of a subsea leak of oil and gas in a deep-water environment, powerful pressure can alter the properties of the plume – hydrate formation, gas dissolution, etc. – and modify its trajectory and impact at the surface.

In order to calibrate and validate the digital model, the METANE project will comprise tests in the laboratory and in an unconfined environment, incorporating different conditions relating to pressure and temperature, as a way of examining the trajectory, dissolution and speed of gas bubbles, or droplets of oil, in the water column. These digital and physical modelling tools for gas and/or oil leaks are being devised in response to current needs as expressed by oil platform operators. More generally, they meet the demands of any system associated with oil exploitation at sea and its transportation to shore.

The METANE project is distinguished by the fact it takes account of a wide spectrum of types of accident, evaluating their consequences and examining new anti-pollution options.

Companies

•    Alyotech Technologies, project director, Rennes
   

• GDF SUEZ, Saint-Denis La Plaine

• Nymphéa Environnement SA, Cassis

Research centres  

• Armines / Ecole des Mines, Alès

• Cedre, Brest

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