Last week we attended an Acoustic Society conference in San Diego. This time I didn’t deliver a paper so it was mostly a reconnaissance trip – both to catch up with colleagues and to introduce Gwynn, our Digital Assets Manager…
Category: Fossil Fuel Industry
Mitigating offshore wind farm noise
One of the hot topics at the recent International Quiet Ocean Experiment in Paris was the noise impacts of offshore wind farms. It seems that while the American Oilmen are furiously trying to carve up the Arctic for fossil fuel,…
The Noisy Cost of Power
It has been thoroughly established that harvesting power from fossil fuel is extremely expensive. Global warming and oil spills notwithstanding, from an ocean noise perspective the hydrocarbon industry is responsible for the lions share of marine noise pollution. Most of…
New seismic trends push into the sea
The seemingly inexorable push of the hydrocarbon industry into ever deeper waters and more challenging environments is advancing some pretty interesting – as well as unusual takes on technology. A recent article from Marine Technology Reporter introduces a new class…
Hands Across the Sand in support of non-fossil fuel.
Saturday June 25 is International “Hands Across the Sand” day – a show of hands (and bodies) in opposition to offshore oil and gas extraction, and in support of renewable energy systems. It can be stated unequivocally that fossil fuel…
OCR Correspondence in Nature Journal
About a month ago Nature Journal published a sobering article about the risks of pushing oil production into the arctic. “A Frozen Hell” by Jeffrey Short and Susan Murray examines the disaster potentials in attempting to extract oil in the…
Houston Pilgrimage
I’ve just returned from my second annual visit to the Offshore Technologies Conference (OTC) in Houston, Texas, a trade show for the offshore “hydrocarbon” industry. As I indicated in my 2010 report, “Bigger than Texas” this event is gargantuan. They…
New noises from deepwater oil operations
Next week I will be at the Pan-American/Iberian meeting on acoustics in Cancún, Quintana Roo, Mexico delivering a paper on the acoustical impacts of new deepwater oil and gas exploration and production (E&P). The “scientific paper” is not really research…
A harbinger of things to come…
Norwegian shipyard Ulstein recently delivered the first of two super seismic vessels to the geophysical company CGGVeritas. These vessels are designed to tow seismic survey airgun and streamer arrays for deepwater offshore fossil fuel exploration and are outfitted for arctic…
An unusual climate of cooperation
I find myself again in Washington DC, this time for a workshop on “Marine Mammals and Sound” sponsored by an interagency group which includes NOAA, the Minerals Management Service, and the Navy. (Interagency cooperation will be one of the hallmarks…