Offshore staff
HORTEN, Norway — Vår Energi has contracted Vissim to upgrade oil spill detection technology at its production installations offshore Norway.
Both the Balder FPSO and the Ringhorne processing platform in the North Sea will be equipped with the new system.
According to Håvard Odden, the program includes reuse of hardware already installed.
Norway requires offshore operators to employ oil spill monitoring technologies that function independent of weather conditions.
All installations on the Norwegian Continental Shelf are equipped with radar technology for vessel tracking. Vissim’s combined solution is said to allow vessel tracking and oil spill detection using the same radar.
A traditional issue experience with radar-based oil spill detection systems is that the image processing technology generates false alarms, which operators have to monitor and respond to manually. They can be triggered by heavy rain, vessel wake or other phenomena.
Vissim’s new approach is based on feedback from Norwegian operators. The radar-based tool features upgraded image processing technology and also machine learning that teaches the system what it needs to respond to and what should be ignored.
“The new system has much higher sensitivity, which means that it will detect smaller oil spills,” Odden explained. “It capitalizes on machine learning and artificial intelligence, which means that the amount of false alarms will drastically decrease, which in turn means less stress on operators. This increases the reliability of the oil spill detection system while it also reduces operators’ costs.”
10.13.2023
