Fast and drifting ice are among the natural phenomena which strongly complicate the development of offshore hydrocarbon fields. There are two problems concerning sea ice. These are: to get significant statistical characteristics of ice objects needed for construction design, and to protect and operate engineering structures. The ice features for investigation are hummocks, ridges, rubble piles, fast ice and drifted ice. An ice monitoring system was developed. It was aimed at collecting, processing and performing the ice cover characteristics of various scales. The observation part of the system includes aircraft and satellite remote sensing and in situ measurements. Processing and performing parts of the system are solved within the framework of a specialized information system "Yamal". The conception and the scheme of the monitoring system are presented in the paper.
The development of the Russian Arctic shelf gas and oil fields is complicated by severe ice conditions. Though ice research in the Russian Arctic regions has a long history and in situ data series include thousands of observation, the quality of those data does not meet the modern requirements of construction design. The main goal of the mainly visual observations conducted from aircrafts and vessels was to support navigation through the Northern Sea Route. Therefore, the covering area was far offshore and the main object to be studied was the concentration of floating ice. The better part of the obtained information could be described as a general overview of ice conditions. On another hand, there were detailed ice observations in the polar stations. Those observations, however, were very sparse. Meanwhile engineering constructions and facilities are to be located in the hydrocarbon fields, regardless the adequacy of existing ice observations. In addition, ice conditions undergo great spatial and temporal variability, both interannual and intraseasonal.
