Middle Eastern Oil company
The Remediation Group was contracted by one of the world’s leading engineering and development consulting firms on behalf of a Middle East-based oil company.
Challenge
The site is on an island in the Arabian Sea. The oil company has an oil production and loading facility for supertankers here and resultant oil contamination. On this site:
- free and dissolving hydrocarbon was being released
- the free phase was floating on the groundwater
- the beach location was sensitive and marine life was under threat
- all materials would have to be shipped in
- temperatures exceeded 50 degrees C by day
The consulting firm had designed a solution for soil remediation but needed a system to remediate the groundwater, yet it was unknown which technology could cope with the harsh yet sensitive conditions.
In addition, the land above had to remain largely unaffected during the groundwater remediation.
The Remediation Group was known to the consulting firm via a previous project. This time the firm needed a specialist contractor to:
- design and manufacture suitable alternatives
- run a pilot of alternatives on site to determine the optimum technology
- conduct a 12 month trial of the best solution to establish extraction rates
- prove efficiency and reliability of the solution, to enable rollout to multiple sites across the island.
Solution
The Remediation Group:
- designed and tested rope and membrane skimmers in Australia
- containerised and shipped all components to site
- sent Australian engineers over to construct both systems on site
- tested both technologies in situ side by side
- confirmed that rope skimmers performed best for shallow extractions and membrane skimmers for deeper ones
- established a 12 month extraction trial using rope skimmers on 3 wells.
Results
After 12 months:
- 30,000 litres of hydrocarbon have been extracted from 3 wells
- The hydrocarbon plume has reduced from 1.5 metres to 10 centimetres in depth
- Expansion to multiple sites across the island is being scoped.
Feedback
"We chose TRG because they are specialists in manufacture of high tech, automated, no nonsense remediation equipment, and they have years of experience and passion for their work. The project has been a success; the right technology has been chosen which is well suited to the site, the climate and to operational needs and the client is very happy."
Senior Engineer, Leading Consulting Firm
