Abstract

The search for oil and gas in offshore areas has intensified rapidly during the last fifty years and production from such areas now contributes significantly to the world market. According to recent estimates, probably about one-quarter of the world’s oil lies beneath the continental shelf areas of the world.

It is of course well known that the oceans have a dominating effect on the world’s climate and weather, and we could spend considerable time in discussing the importance of the role played by the climate in the formation of the various minerals. It is clear that each mineral has its own particular set of environmental conditions conducive to its formation and concentration into the producible deposits existing today. Our talk today however will deal mainly with the subject. “How does the climate and weather affect offshore operations, either during the search for oil or in the follow-up production phase and what meteorological/oceanographic information is actually needed to carry out these operations efficiently and safely.”

Offshore operations are carried out in nearly every sea and ocean of the earth, so that relevant sea and weather condition classifications range from “calm” to “very rough”. In addition, the search for offshore oil is already extending to polar areas, and consequently the problems of navigation and the construction and operation of installations in waters subject to ice floes, icebergs, or even general icing over are becoming increasingly important.

The search for offshore oil is also extending to deeper water and with the tremendous increase during recent years in engineering technology, mobile offshore drilling units, equipped with computerised dynamic positioning systems can now be employed to drill in 2000 metres waterdepth and over.

It is obvious that although a good knowledge of the local weather pattern, supplemented by statistical environmental data, must of necessity improve (and possibly greatly improve) the efficiency of offshore operations in any given area, they are absolutely vital to the establishment of correct design criteria for whatever surface or subsurface structures may be involved.