OIL IN ICE

During a three-year project financed by the Research Council of Norway, Statoil and Norsk Hydro, SINTEF has been working with NILU and UiB to research how an oil spillage reacts in ice. This knowledge is valuable to gain an insight into the biological effects of an oil spillage in the Arctic region and also to establish oil spill contingency planning in these ice-infested waters.

As well as discovering more about oil’s characteristic in ice, the research scientists have studied photo-oxidisation of the oil and how the water soluble components in oil spread in the ice.