Every operation site, oil and gas drilling, shipping, pipelines and loadingfacilities, need a design basis to be properly planned. Also monitoring of theenvironment when the operation has already started is of utmost importance. This became noticed already in late 1960ies during the Manhattan voyages. Eversince ice data has been collected around various projects both in the westernand eastern Arctic. In Canada the heat was on during the Polar Gas and ArcticPilot Project in the 1970ies and 80ies. The discoveries in the Russian Arcticlaunched systematic arrangements to collect ice data in the in thePechora Sea, Barents Sea, Kara Sea, Ob Bay and offshore Sakhalin Island duringthe last 25 years. This paper describes the main features of typicalarrangements made for a successful data collection expedition, how arrangementsworked and also difficulties met during the execution of such anexpedition.
In a successful project the ice conditions play a significant role and it isof utmost importance to have sufficient data on the design conditions. Forinstance each component in an oil export system like onshore pipelines/terminals, underwater pipelines, offloading terminals, assistant icebreakersand export transportation vessels, has design requirements of its own. A designbasis must be made for each component of the system. This requires aconsiderable amount of work, both data collection in the field and reviews ofliterature as well as analyses to make a reliable design basis. This is thefirst step.
Planning of any offshore or transport project requires careful analyses ofsafety, impact and economics of the planned operations and equipment.
A lot of information is needed both on the environment as well as of theoperations themselves. Planning the operations and doing the design based oninadequate or unreliable data may lead to uneconomic operation or in worstcases severe damages of the environment or human life.
