Author(s): Tony King; Gary Sonnichsen
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Keywords: No keywords
Abstract: Offshore Labrador holds considerable promise for natural gas development, with discovered reserves of 4.2 TCF natural gas and 123 million barrels natural gas liquids established during the drilling of 28 wells (with 5 significant discoveries) during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Increasing demand for natural gas has renewed interest in exploration and development on the Labrador Shelf and Slope. Iceberg scour is a significant consideration for pipelines and subsea structures in this region. Recently, a number of multibeam seabed surveys have been conducted to establish baseline surveys for future repetitive mapping and to determine scour geometric parameters (i. e. length, width, depth, orientation) for engineering design. In this paper, multibeam surveys conducted in 2003 and 2006, covering almost 1000 km2 of seabed, are examined and distributions of key geometric parameters of scour features are presented according to location and water depth. Issues related to the discrimination of relict and recent iceberg scour features are discussed, as well as a comparison with scour parameters established during previous (pre-1990) surveys and how the perception of iceberg scour risk has changed with the availability of more recent data.
Year: 2008