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Mineral Resources Management Division - Rigs to Reefs Workshop
Rick Kasprzak |
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Mr. Kasprzak is the Program Manager of the Louisiana Artificial Reef Program for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. The focus of this program is to coordinate the conversion of decommissioned oil and gas platforms into artificial reefs for the enhancement of fisheries resources. He previously was a biologist with the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries focussing on the population dynamics of finfish and shrimp populations of the state. He has a B.S. degree from Loyola College, Maryland (1975) and has pursued graduate studies at the University of Alabama and Louisiana State University |
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I'm here to talk to you about Louisiana artificial reef program. Rigs to reefs is an acronym. That's just basically a component of our program. The major component but it's just a component.
They are actually an artificial reef program. We do use other materials like shell pad which is for shallow water reefs. We've used 40 armored personnel carriers offshore of Louisiana, but mostly we use oil and gas platforms which are readily available.
The program began in 1986 with the enactment of the Louisiana Fishing and Enhancement Act. This act created the Louisiana artificial reef program. Prior to that, Louisiana had probably the world's largest artificial reef system.
The first platform was installed offshore Louisiana in1947 by Kerr-McGee. It was in Ship Shoal Block 32, which is 18 miles from shore and about 12 feet of the water. The first structure is a crude wooden structure which restricted the water depths that oil and gas exploration consisted.
As technology improved, oil and gas exploration quickly expanded. Until today we have over 3,700 platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. The water depths are up to 1,700 feet deep, and Ron can correct me on that if it's wrong.
It didn't take long before the fishermen in Louisiana recognized the fishing opportunities that existed beneath these platforms.
Now, this is where the other one comes in. These platforms are particularly important off Louisiana where the natural reefs occur hundreds of miles off shore with waters 400 to 600 feet deep.
Typically, the Gulf of Mexico is just a flat featureless mud bottoms and supports very good marine life on its own.
It's been estimated that the average platform harbors 50 to 70 percent more fish than nearby soft mud bottoms. A platform in 120 feet of water creates about one and a half acres of hard bottom habitat.
If you multiply that by 3,700, you increase the amount of hard bottom habitat in the Gulf off of Louisiana and Texas by an estimated 28 percent. So it's very significant.
This shows you the importance of platforms where the majority of fish are immediately adjacent to the platform. This basically shows you the effects of the soft mud bottoms where the fish populations dramatically drop off.
Many fishermen thought these platforms were permanent. But they're not. Typically they're removed using explosives. Recently concerns have been expressed over their impacts on Gulf marine mammals and sea turtles, and more recently concerns have been expressed over the impacts on red snapper which is a very important fin fish off the Gulf of Mexico.
However, explosives are by far the safest, most economical and most reliable method of removing or severing the pile and conductors.
Federal law and international law require the platform to be removed one year after they ceased production.
These platforms are not necessarily removed and taken elsewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, although that's been the common practice lately. They're usually taken to shore, cut up for scrap, causing loss of habitat use to most of Louisiana's fishermen.
To date, over 1,600 platforms have been removed from the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of approximately 100 per year.
Japan spends millions of dollars to create structures that look remarkably similar to our oil and gas platforms. These are used in mariculture projects off Japan's coast.
In 1984, John Breaux authored the National Fishing Enhancement Act. This Act encourages states to develop well-planned, well-organized artificial reef programs.
Another key aspect of this act is that it absolved donors of any liability once the structure of the donated materials was properly sited and transferred to the state.
On the heels of this act was formed the Louisiana Artificial Reef Initiative. This was composed of the state and federal agencies, university people, sea grant programs, the oil and gas industry, Corps of Engineers, the Coast Guard. It addressed navigational concerns.
But more importantly, it was composed of the recreational and commercial fishermen who wanted to see these platforms maintained as artificial reefs. It's up to the states and the federal government and the oil and gas industry to come up with a mechanism to do that.
Out of that committee came the Louisiana Fishing Enhancement Act. This act required that a plan be written and had a council appointed to oversee the artificial reef program.
It also outlined an exclusion mapping process to minimize impacts on other users such as shrimping, fin fish, pipeline companies, navigational interests, what name you. Any of the other users of the Gulf of Mexico.
From that exclusion mapping process, we identified nine planning areas to minimize the impacts on other users.
And this is very important in establishing artificial reef programs.
To address navigational interests, we have to maintain, 50 to 85 feet of clearance of platforms. Since the platforms have a jacket of approximately 50 feet, we have to operate the water depths over -- between 100 and 135 feet.
To achieve that off of Louisiana, the 100-foot contour exists between 30 and 75 miles off shore. That's why most of our planning areas were located in fairly deep water. We generally operate in ranges from about 100 to about 300 feet.
The act, since the program receives no funding from the state general fund, set a mechanism by which the oil companies donate 50 percent of their savings to the state as a result of artificial reef development.
This can range anywhere from about $50,000 to over a million dollars per platform. So the artificial reef program is a win, win situation for everybody. The oil and gas companies save money on decommissioning. The state has a program run at no cost to the taxpayers.
It provides fishing and diving opportunities off of Louisiana but more importantly, maintains the fish habitat that was already established when the platform was first installed.
Since the 3,700 platforms are mostly off Louisiana and Texas, Louisiana and Texas have the most active rigs to reefs programs. There's about 3,200 off Louisiana and about 505 in federal waters off Texas and only a handful off of Mississippi and Alabama.
The national plan specifies five characteristics that should be adhered to by most artificial reef materials. They must function well as artificial reefs.
We found that oil and gas platforms do this. As I mentioned, 50 to 70 percent of all offshore fishing trips are destined for oil and gas platforms.
It must be durable and stable. In other words, they have to last a long time, and they must not move. They must stay on location. It must be compatible with the marine environment. And since Ron mentioned, we only use the jackets in this case, so it never comes in contact with any of the hydrocarbons, so there's no impact on the marine environment. And with 3,700, obviously they're readily available.
Before any rig is considered for inclusion on our program, we must do a pretoppling survey. If the platform is in one of the designated planning areas, it can be set from the sea floor and toppled in place.
If it's outside the planning areas, as this one that's installed from Texas, it has to be lifted from the site, transported to a permitted site within our planning areas, lowered to the sea floor and then toppled.
If the water is deep enough and you can provide the 85-feet clearance needed, you can leave it actually standing upright.
Before leaving the reef site, we generally mark it with a buoy to provide safe navigation and allow the fishermen to be able to find it. In some cases where the platform is in shallow enough water, we install a mooring buoy to allow the fishermen to tie off and provide direct access to the reef site itself.
But in some cases, buoys don't always stay on locations.
We created 127 reefs, and this basically is a year old as well. They vary from a low in 1989 to a high of 35 in 1994. And Texas began their program in 1990. So I have 127 markers for Gulfwide and that's a dated figure.
If we look at the distribution of platforms off of Louisiana and Texas, we find that 127 out of the 1,400 platforms removed since 1986 have been converted to artificial reefs.
That's an average of about a little bit less than 10 percent. However, if we look at our operational depths between 100 feet and 400 feet, we find 256 have been created into artificial reefs. That's an average of about 50 percent.
Most of the platforms are small conductors with well heads that exist in shallow water. And generally it's cheaper to bring them to shore rather than making them into artificial reefs.
So it's not always economical to create or turn a platform into an artificial reef. It depends a lot on water depth, distance from shore, size of the structure, and the proximity to one of the planning areas. In our case in Texas it states that they try to capture as many as they can because they only have 505 – and we have over 3,200.
So we have a plan here in concept. Texas does theirs on a case by case basis.