Hibernia Oil Field

In my petroleum geology class, we have been discussing the Hibernia Oil field and its contribution to the world's petroleum production. The Hibernia oil field is Canada's largest offshore oil operation and is located 315km SE offshore of St. John's, Newfoundland. The platform itself is the world's largest physical offshore oil platform and is made of 37,000 tons of integrated topsides that is all mounted on a 600,000 t gravity base structure (which means that the platform itself sits on the ocean floor due to the very shallow depth on the Grand Banks and has very large tanks filled with magnetite ballast that weigh 1.2 million tons, securing the rig in place). There is enough storage on the platform to hold 1.3 million bbl of crude oil. We learned in class that the Hibernia platform produces enough oil in one year to supply the entire world for one day. In other words, it produces 0.00274% of the worlds oil supply. If you want to put the world's petroleum usage into physical parameters, each day the entire world uses enough oil to fill a tank that is the size of the whole SMU campus and that is 100m high. It is amazing to think that we have been consuming this amount of oil on a constant day to day basis.

Exploration drilling of the Hibernia oil field began in the 1960s and lasted for a few decades before, in the mid-1980s, Mulroney said that the main commercialization of Hibernia was going to be done by Petro-Canada. At the time, Petro-Canada was a crown-corporation but has since been privatized. It took several years to get the production up and running, and only with the help of a few competitor oil companies assistance (which were Mobil; now ExxonMobil, Chevron, Murphy, to name a few) was the field able to begin major production. The production began on November 17, 1997 and has proven to be very successful ever since. There is a fleet of tankers that travel continuously back and forth between the platform and the Avalon Peninsula transporting the crude oil. I find this oil field interesting because of its close proximity to Halifax, and how much crude oil it actually produces. It has been good for the economy of Newfoundland as well with the depletion of the fish in the Grand Banks.

Mariana Trench

I think that the Mariana Trench is the most interesting feature in any ocean. I have also wondered about this part of the ocean (before I was in university) because I knew only that it was the deepest part of the ocean, and that we knew next to nothing about the landscape of life that resides in the trench. I remember my grade 12 global geography teacher was trying to make a point about how little relief is actually on the planet, and he drew a large quarter of a circle across three chalk boards to represent the earth, and then drew in a little peak about an inch high representing Everest and a trench about the same size and said it was Mariana Trench. I also remember him saying that if you cut off Mount Everest and put it inside the Trench that it would fit in and still have a few kilometers until the ocean surface. I think that is what made me interested in the Trench. It is 11,034 meters below sea level and is located south of Japan and east of the Philippines, close to Guam. The Trench is part of a subduction zone where the Pacific plate is being subducted under the Philippine plate. It was first surveyed by the Royal Navy vessel Challenger in 1951. The scientists used echo sounding techniques to estimate its depth at 11,022m. It was later estimated that its depth was 10,911 meters, but most recently (as of February 6, 2007), the trench was measured at 11,034, making the initial estimate at its depth more accurate than subsequent guesses.

In 1960, a dive was attempted in the United States Navy Bathyscape named "Trieste" with the hopes of reaching the bottom of the trench. U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh and Jaques Piccard were on board, and at 1:06pm on January 23, the bathyscape hit the bottom. The pressure was measured at 1,086 bar, or 15,751 psi, which is approximately 1000 atmospheres greater than at the surface. There have been other estimates at its depth and pressure by other countries, but all estimates seem to be within 50 meters of each other. Marianas Trench has also been a part of popular culture as it is referred to in several movies including Deep Rising, The Core (where the team of scientists try to reach the centre of the Earth and start their journey by entering the asthenosphere through Mariana Trench) to name a few. It has also been mentioned in several novels and songs.

I also find it very interesting how little we know about the trench. It has been stated in the Oceans course that we know less about the oceans than we do about Mars, and seeing as Mariana Trench is the deepest part of any ocean, to me it is like another planet except we know that there IS life there and we still have much to learn. I think about how little we know about the Trench at this point in my life, and I wonder how much we will know when I am 40, 60, or 80 years old (knock on wood). The problem that I see with these discoveries is that with so many other issues to focus on, exploring the deep sea is not on the top of the global scientific priority list (when compared to issues such as global warming, solving world hunger, etc.) and therefore it may be several decades to centuries before these discoveries are made.

(for this writeup, I used Wikipedia as well as marianatrench.com)

Seafloor Spreading

Sea floor spreading is one part of the theory of plate tectonics. I find this process interesting because it is responsible for creating our oceans and also is one of the ways that our Earth reproduces rock material in the lithosphere. I often think about the many interconnected processes that have helped to shape our world to what it is today. Seafloor spreading also allows us to predict what or planet will look like in many years to come, as well as allowing us to predict natural hazards.

The theory of seafloor spreading was hypothesized in 1960 by Harry Hess who was a professor at Princeton University. Though Alfred Wegener originally thought of the idea of continental drift, Harry Hess was able to find proof of the spreading mid-Atlantic ridge during World War II. Hess was captain of the USS Cape Johnson which was a trans-Atlantic transport ship that was equipped with Sonar, which at the time was a relatively new technology. Though the sonar was used to find hidden submarines, Hess was able to collect data from the seafloor and upon analyzing the information, noticed that there was a magnetic anomaly that showed identical patterns on either side of the middle of the ocean (mid-Atlantic ridge). He hypothesized that the Ocean was spreading, and used these magnetic anomalies as proof. On either side of the ridge, the seafloor's magnetic orientation changed over time, and produced an obvious pattern (each side of the ridge had identical magnetic properties). This phenomenon was caused by the magnetic north pole changing over time from our geographic north and south poles, and hence the orientation of the isotopes in the rock are altered. He produced his results in a paper titles "History of Ocean Basins" which was released in 1962. For a long while after, this paper was the single most referenced work in solid-earth geophysics (Wikipedia).

I believe that in science, the huge leaps and discoveries are taken by researchers who are willing study topics different from the normal idea and way of thinking to go out on a limb and try and prove a theory that, at the time, may see impossible. At the time, Hess was not as well received by some of the scientific community, but over time, his theories have been monumental in geology. The same goes for Alfred Wegener; after releasing his paper on Continental Drift, it was not well received, and he had many critics. For one, Wegener was not even a geologist; he was a meteorologist which made it difficult for leading geologist to trust his theory. I think that these men and women are greatly responsible for the great leaps we have taken in science. This reminds me of a quote from my favorite movie, A Beautiful Mind starring Russell Crowe, when he said "Find a truly original idea. It is the only way I will ever distinguish myself. It is the only way I will ever matter." It seems that the scientists that are not only trying to build on what other scientists have discovered in the past, but come up with truly original ideas, are the ones that will be remembered long after they pass away.