Brief History of NORM in the OilGas Industry

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Brief History of NORM in the Oil/Gas Industry

• Dr.Brian Heaton

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Is it a new phenomenon?
The oil and gas industry has been working for
over 100 years is this a new problem or has it
been around for some time?
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Is it a new phenomenon?
Radioactive scales have been recognised for many
years as being a problem when carrying out well
logging operations. Definitive paper by Campbell
in 1951 Radioactivity Well Logging Anomalies,
Petroleum Engineer, Volume23 N0.6 pp7-12
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Is it a new phenomenon?
Walter Fertl, the General manager for Dresser
Petroleum Engineering Services in Nov 1983 in a
paper in World Oil talks about the occurrence of
radioactive crusts providing valuable
supplementary information on Dynamic reservoir
field conditions behind perforated casing,
recognition of faulty cementing jobs, water break
through profiles and monitoring of oil/water
contacts
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Is it a new phenomenon?
Gesell wrote a paper for Health Physics in 1975
(29 pp681-687) entitled Occupational Exposure due
to Rn-22 in Natural Gas and Natural Products. In
this paper he identified external radiation
fields and internal alpha particle exposure to
the respiratory tract and other organs due to
Pb-210 and Po-210 as a problem.
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Perception of Risk from Natural Sources

• International Commission on Radiological
  Protection recognised that Radon and Cosmic
  Radiation and some Thorium ores may be a problem
  in ICRP 26 but rather played the significance
  down. ICRP 26 does not refer to NORM.
• Many countries did not have any legislation with
  regard to NORM
• Health Physics professionals were not in general
  very interested in the problems of NORM (except
  Radon)

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Perception of Risk from Natural Sources

• The general public often do not perceive natural
  radiation as being as dangerous as man made
  radiation.

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What changed?

• In 1981 a log on a production well on the
  Occidental platform Piper Alpha went off scale.
• Despite all the earlier papers this appeared to
  be a surprise and people actually thought that it
  could be from Scandium 85 that was used to
  monitor cement when it was being pumped.

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What changed?

• Samples sent for counting showed that
  radionuclides from both the Uranium-238 and
  Thorium-232 decay series were present.
• The activity levels were high enough to bring the
  material into the requirements of the UK
  environmental legislation.

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Radioactive Substances Act 1993
Element Solid Liquid Gas
Becquerels per gram Radium 0.37 0.00037
3.70x10-5 Lead 0.74 0.0074
1.11x10-4 Polonium 0.37 0.0037
2.22x10-4 Actinium 0.37 0.0037
2.59x10-6 Radon 3.70x10-2
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Tubular from Piper Alpha
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Implications under UK Legislation

• Discharges offshore and onshore cleaning had to
  take place under licence from the Environment
  Agency
• Occupational Exposure legislation had to be
  complied with.

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What happened Internationally?

• Very little. It was thought that the method of
  oil extraction in the North Sea where large
  volumes of seawater were being pumped into the
  formation to maintain pressure made the situation
  there different from elsewhere.
• In 1985 Chevron in the USA looked at tubulars
  from their fields and identified that a problem
  existed.

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What happened Internationally?

• In 1984 the E and P Forum based in the UK set up
  a committee to look at the problem. We sent out
  a questionnaire to operators all over the world
  asking if they had taken any measurements and
  what results they had.

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Situation Now

• In many countries progress is slow because of
  lack of infrastructure to deal with radioactive
  waste.
• Some countries still do not want to accept they
  have a problem.
• For the operators it is not just a legislative
  issue but also a reputational one.
• In some parts of the world there is also a
  substantial litigation problem.

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• Given this history I hope that coming out of
  the presentations and discussions we will get
  some ideas on
• Presenting the problem to management in a way to
  get their support through a better understanding
  of the problem.
• Finding solutions to some of our problems.
• Identifying a common approach to some of these
  problems for the region.