Sustainable offshore operations in Somalia: Integrating geohazard assessment, environmental governance, and engineering constraints

Abstract

This paper presents a framework that can be used to make an offshore petroleum project in Somalia sustainable through a critical evaluation of both engineering gaps, seismic risks, and regulatory frameworks. The Somali offshore basins are also typified by complicated hazards such as shallow gas, fault systems, mass transport deposits, and unstable seabed slopes, which have high potential for hydrocarbons. These challenges are also affected by the ultra-deepwater and metocean forces. The present study was done in four forces, which include the seismic interpretation of TPAO blocks 142,152 and 153, conducted in the first stage of the study to determine the risks of ground. Furthermore, the second stage of the study highlighted the issues related to the engineering perspectives, such as the riser integrity, selection of the platform, mooring design, and pipeline routing. Also, international lessons on data- driven regulation and adaptive governance were presented through a comparative account of offshore governance models in Norway, China, and Ghana. Using these findings thesis introduces the Integrated Offshore Sustainability Framework (IOSF), involving three different pillars, namely technical integration, policy and governance, and operational management. The technical pillar entails the Seismic Hazard Management Module (SHMM) that transforms the geohazard interpretation into an engineering constraint form, predictive maintenance, and real- time operational control. The governance pillar incorporates engineering intelligence within licensing and oversight, namely, whereas the operational pillar plans hazard data with emergency response plans. The IOSF is expected to be a handy and multipurpose resource towards sustainable operations in the frontier petroleum fields. Nevertheless, it has some limitations because it depends on the 2D seismic data; hence, it is unable to monitor its environment completely. However, even in the face of these restrictions, the proposed IOSF is the way forward to future work in the form of 3D seismic data acquisition, geotechnical investigation, and digital real-time monitoring. In general, this paper introduces a novel solution to the organization of technical and operational, environmental, and governance solutions in order to make the offshore oil development operations in Somalia functionally safe and sustainable.