of that industry, is no different in this regard from any other field of scientific endeavor. Categorical guarantees just are not in the cards. There al question and often times the most significant problem then is what is the best possible assessment of the realities of a potential course of action; in other words, «Which experts should one believe?» And let 's face it, this is no small task because the issues are complex and interwoven and the experts are numerous.
Integrated French energy giantis continuing to spread its wings as it focuses on liquefied natural gas (LNG), deep offshore developments, and heavy oil. The Company is seeking to maximize production from its existing fields, while at the same time boosting output from a raft of new projects it is bringing on stream over the next 5 years.has ambitious plans to grow oil and gas output by 2% per year and it is trying to strengthen its upstream arm through exploration, partnerships, and targeted asset deals. Total is the fifth-largest publicly traded integrated international oil and gas company in the world and is divided into three business segments? Upstream, Downstream, and Chemicals. It produces oil and gas in more than 30 countries, including Angola, Australia, Nigeria, Algeria, Canada, China, Russia, and Qatar.
1. New ways to monitor offshore environments
progress in techniques to monitor regular and planned exploration and production discharges offshore is expanding environmental management options for E & P companies. New water column and sediment measurement methods help make possible informed environmental management decisions. Such monitoring methods can be particularly important as E & P companies look to work in sensitive and previously unexplored environments that test the limits of conventional monitoring.some cases, tried and true methods have only limited applicability in deepwater operations and arctic projects. Furthermore, emissions from long-term, regular discharges are the subject of increased focus in terms of effects in the sea and in application of the best available treatment technologies.environmental monitoring can apply to permits and licenses, validation of numerical models, regulatory reporting, and technology selection. Nearly all the environmental management of an offshore installation relies in some way on the data from marine environmental surveys. For example, the initial state of the seas surrounding a development are monitored for baseline data and, following start-up, monitoring of the sediment and water column is performed periodically to help ensure the good environmental condition. Also, technology selection can be validated, as in the case of a platform in Norway where water treatment engineers used a fish biomarker survey to demonstrate the effectiveness of improved produced water treatment. Therefore, good, reliable data that represent temporal and spatial variation are needed to meet these and other environmental management needs. However, monitoring in the marine medium is challenging and limitations often restrict the amount of data available. More and more oil and gas developments are located offshore. Nevertheless, with easily accessible oil and gas provinces already having been explored, future developments will take place in increasingly harsh environments, such as the west of Shetlands North Sea,...
