Engineering & Environmental Research

DF Dickins Associates, LLC

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David Dickins

ONGOING DEVELOPMENTS

DF Dickins Associates continues to provide specialized exclusive consulting services to Chevron’s Arctic Center tasked with supporting the company’s global Arctic exploration and development challenges from offices in Calgary.  A recent contract renewal extends this rewarding collaboration through 2014.

Detecting Oil in Ice with Ground Penetrating Radar

Measuring ice temperatures at the 2011 CRREL test

Dickins Associates is leading a further Joint Industry Project in the latest of a series of programs aimed at developing an operational ground penetrating radar (GPR) that can detect oil trapped underneath or within sea ice from a low-level helicopter.  Whereas previous phases utilized commercially-available impulse radars operating at a single frequency, the latest program is focused on designing, building and testing an entirely new system that is optimized for an airborne application.  Following initial testing of the first prototype in March 2011, the new radar was redesigned and improved by the engineering team at Boise State University over the course of the last year.  A second test program at the US Army Cold Regions Research Environmental Laboratory (CRREL) in Hanover, NH is scheduled for February 2012.  A successful outcome would lead to actual flight tests over thick sea ice (without oil) at Prudhoe Bay later this winter.  Participants are: Alaska Clean Seas, ExxonMobil, Shell, Statoil, ConocoPhillips and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE).

See Projects – Oil Spills for a synopsis of previous work in this area and links to published reports including a journal article describing successful airborne detection of oil on the ice surface buried under snow on Svalbard in 2008 (Bradford et al., Geophysics 2010).

RECENT PUBLICATIONS AND CONFERENCES

David Dickins presented papers at two Arctic events in Europe in 2011:

1. Oil Spills in Sea Ice:  Past Present and Future.
   Organized by the Istituto Geografico Polare in Fermo Italy, September 20-23.  Paper entitled "Oil Spill Behaviour in Ice:  Overview of four decades of research and lessons for future Arctic spill response."
2. Arctic Oil Spill Conference.
   Organized by ibc Energy, Hilton London Paddington Hotel, October 4-5.  Paper entitled "The Behaviour of Offshore Oil Spills in the Arctic and the Implications for Response" David Dickins co-chaired this conference with Steve Potter of SL Ross Environmental Research.

Arctic Roundtable Review

The Canadian Government Arctic Offshore Drilling Review (AODR) provided an opportunity to carefully assess and consider all aspects of Arctic spill response in open water and ice.  Aimed determining future filing requirements to drill in the Canadian Arctic offshore, the review culminated in the Arctic Roundtable Review held in Inuvik, NWT Sept 10-16, 2011.  David Dickins participated in the full review process, representing Chevron Canada.

The Ice Navigation Manual

Dickins prepared a chapter on oil pollution in Arctic waters as part of The Ice Navigation Manual published by Witherby Seamanship International.  The new book was released early in March 2010 and can be ordered from Amazon or from Witherby Seamanship International's website. The breadth and scope of the manual is illlustrated in this video: