Close-up of the desalination and liquid natural gas export infrastructures in Qatar. Credit: Thomas Anselain, Essam Heggy, Thomas Dobbelaere & Emmanuel Hanert
Key points:
- A maritime area three times the size of the city of London holds the highest risk for oil spills in the Gulf.
- The study suggests tankers crossing this area of the Gulf are the main risks for oil spills.
- The researchers believe satellite surveillance might be key in detecting possible oil spills and limiting their impact.
The world’s energy market has been highly volatile this past year, but a warmer-than-average winter in Europe helped dodge a gas crisis. But next year’s winter weather forecast is unclear, leaving researchers worried about the 20 percent of global liquefied natural gas exports that originate from a single port in Qatar.
A paper published in Nature Sustainability by a team of researchers at the University of Louvain, the University of Southern California, and the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute, pinpoints the location of what the authors call a “high vulnerability zone”—where an oil spill could cause liquified natural gas export facilities and desalination plants to be completely shut down for several days.
To put the size of the issue in context, experts believe that the largest liquid natural gas tankers from Qatar provide enough energy to heat the entire city of London for one week.
For the paper, the researchers used advanced numerical modeling to correlate maritime data transports, atmospheric circulation, ocean currents, waves, and seafloor topographic map data acquired over a period of five years to locate specific, offshore areas of the Qatar Peninsula that are vulnerable to oil spills. The study suggests that tankers crossing this area of the Gulf, not the oil rigs themselves, are the main risks for oil spills.
It also advocates for increased remote sensing using satellite and airborne images in the Gulf's most vulnerable areas to provide early warning for spills and better model their evolution.
“Global containment of major oil spills has always been challenging, but it is even harder in the shallow water of the Gulf where any intervention has to account for the complex circulation currents, a harsh operational environment, and the presence of highly sensitive ecosystems on which three million humans rely for drinking water,” said co-author Essam Heggy of the USC Arid Climate and Water Research Center. “I hope serious resources are put into resolving this vulnerability.”
Researchers believe satellite surveillance will be key to limiting the possible impact of these spills.