Studies on Oil and Ice

Göran Wilkman

Shipping in the Arctic and the Baltic in ice covered waters has been going on for over 100 years. During the last 30—35 years oil exploration has entered the icy regions. This has brought the threat of oil spill in big scale. When the first oil exploration started in ice areas the knowledge of what the behavior and effect of oil would be was limited. However in the end of the 1970ies emphasis on this was put at the Wärtsilä Arctic Design and Marketing (WADAM) together with Wärtsilä Ice Model Basin (WIMB), both predecessors of today’s Aker Arctic Technology. At first the studies included the basic understanding of the processes when oil gets mixed with ice, followed by initial model testing to confirm some of the parametrical influences. Later a full-scale test was done in the Helsinki Harbor basin to get confirmation on practice. In the late 1980ies and early 1990ies the involvement in the studies done in the conjunction of the Antonio Gramsky catastrophe - one of the biggest oil spill incidents in the Baltic - gave quite a good confirmation on the earlier observations. These earlier studies together with present knowledge and possibilities to integrate oil recovery systems onboard vessels have generated completely new type of icebreaking vessels like the Oblique and Trimaran Icebreaker. The paper discusses about the early development together with testing the possibility of oil collection from ice and show the new possibilities in ship design relevant to oil recovery.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90177©3P Arctic, Polar Petroleum Potential Conference & Exhibition, Stavanger, Norway, October 15-18, 2013