Environmental Monitoring And Risk Data For The Barents Sea: Biosea, A Knowledge Building Project

In the Norwegian Sector of the Barents Sea and Lofoten areas a precautionary principle has been applied since 2006 for regulating discharges of produced water and drilling mud from O&G activities. This precautionary approach was adopted, in absence of scientific knowledge about ecosystem impacts, to avoid possible significant damage to the main resources of these areas. The lack of empirical knowledge on potential impacts, and thus of tolerance limits in relation to E&P activities, prevents the application of effective mitigation and riskbased management measures. Eni E&P, its subsidiary Eni Norge, TOTAL E&P and its subsidiary TOTAL E&P NORGE, have joined forces to establish a research project, called BioSea, designed to build a scientific platform for a Risk based Environmental Management of Arctic E&P offshore activities. The project objectives were to develop a suitable set of tools for environmental monitoring in North Sea and Arctic offshore areas, and to improve scientific knowledge on the sensitivity of Arctic species to dispersed crude oil and produced water compared to the North Sea species. The BioSea demonstrated, through laboratory experiments with living organisms and field surveys, the relevance of typical oil exposure parameters (biomarkers) as a valuable tool for oil exposure monitoring in different Arctic species. This new approach was first developed and then refined based on the measured sensitivity of selected Arctic organisms towards specific biomarkers. Biomarker field reference levels were also established for the same species, carrying out field surveys in Svalbard and Barents Sea areas, during different seasons and at different environmental conditions. The establishment of biomarker threshold levels, obtained from a combination of laboratory experiments and field surveys, will contribute to the definition of Assessment Criteria to be used in future monitoring programmes for the evaluation of environmental quality, as required by the Integrated Management Plan for the Barents Sea and Lofoten areas. This paper provides a description of the main achievements obtained during the project