Consequences analysis of oil production fluids spills and risk index generation of tallgrass prairie preserve with GIS

Currently, the primary problem facing the domestic oil industry is the high production expenses associated with environmental compliance. The existing reactive approaches such as Risk Based Corrective Action (RBCA) allows cost-effective allocation of limited resources among multiple impacted sites for minimizing health and ecosystem risks. Instead of reacting to an event, our method is more effective in reducing the risk of contaminant releases into the environment by taking a proactive risk management strategy. As a result, this proactive risk management approach has the potential of effecting significant cost savings.; The objectives of this project include: (1) estimating the consequences of an accidental release of produced fluids in term of financial loss, (2) generating a lease level Risk Index Map (RIM) of oil production units operations, and (3) developing a computer program that allows risk managers to utilize and update the Risk Index Map. Generating a consistent risk ranked map of potentially impacted areas of Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, located in Osage county, Oklahoma is the primary goal of this project.; A physical transport model was developed to quantify the extent of a spill on a real topographic soil surface. The governing equation for the 2-Dimensional surface flow of constant density fluid plus vertical infiltration was developed based from the mass conservation, with the non-inertial assumption of the Cauchy momentum equation in rectangular coordinates, Darcy-Weisbach flow resistance, and the vertical infiltration model by Smith and Parlange. The equation for surface flow is expressed in partial differential form. The Method of Lines was employed to convert the PDE into a set of ODEs by discretizing the spatial derivatives using explicit backward differences and leaving the time derivative unchanged. The resultant set of coupled simultaneous ODEs for surface spreading and vertical downward infiltration are integrated forward in time by MATLAB ode45 solver. Model validation results from artificial surface and real topography tests show that this physical transport model has fulfilled the basic requirements of a surface flow model. The additional mapping of real spill scar simulation shows that the physical transport model has the potential to predict the areal extent of a release with error less than 30%. A sensitivity analysis was also performed to determine the effect of uncertainty of input parameter values on model output (the predicted spill extent). The advantage of this physical transport model is to predict the extent of a brine or crude oil spilled on soil surfaces having different surface characteristics, and variable density of standing vegetation and organic litter.; The spill extent, risk category of an incident, and bioremediation treatment cost provide sufficient complete information to quantify financial consequence of a spill at the specific failed equipment location. Risk is defined as the product of financial consequence and probability of occurrence of a spill, in which the normalization of risks gives relative risk index. A user friendly interface written in Visual Basic Application has been developed to link the necessary GIS database with both the consequence analysis model and probabilistic reliability estimation model. In conclusion, this study provides surface spill modeling, useful procedures and information toward building a comprehensive environmental risk assessment tool.