CSnet’s Offshore Communications Backbone in Cyprus a report by Andrew Clark Founder and CEO of CSnet International Inc.


Today’s Tsunami Warning System Set to Support Tomorrow’s Digital Oil Field


The oil field of tomorrow may benefit from helping to satisfy the needs of the scientific community today. Ever more stringent requirements are likely to insist upon robust and perhaps independent means of controlling and communicating with seafloor components during drilling and especially during any uncontrolled event. Furthermore, the desire for year-long data sets characterising the ‘pre-construction’ environmental baseline prior even to seismic exploration requires reliable, unattended long-term subsea and seafloor monitoring systems. The very systems needed to provide this realtime and continuous control and communication – and that could ultimately serve to tie together resultant offshore production facilities to shore with broadband connectivity – are identical to those being operated by the scientific and oceanographic community. These science-based ‘ocean observatories’ range in purpose from enabling the basic understanding of global processes to the long-term monitoring, detection and early warning of potentially catastrophic natural hazards such as seismic and tsunami events.


Noble’s ‘Leviathan 1’ exploratory well – that may yield as much as 16 trillion cubic feet of gas – borders on the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of Cyprus (see Figure 1). In 2007, the Republic of Cyprus issued a tender for licensing their southern EEZ. Though there was only limited interest – Noble won the only lease: Block Number 12 depicted in Figures 6 and 7 – based upon these recent and significant finds in neighbouring Israel’s EEZ, a second tender round of exploration rights set for late 2011 is anticipated to engender much more activity.


One region that has, for the past several years, been a proving ground for such an ocean observatory, now also finds itself at the forefront of the offshore oil and gas industry’s attention. The Eastern Mediterranean has not only been the focus of numerous recent articles in energy trade journals including Exploration & Production, but also of mainstream publications including the Wall Street Journal and Fortune Magazine. A recent New York Times article referred to Noble Oil Company’s apparent bonanza discoveries in Israel’s offshore Tamar and Leviathan fields as “the most important energy news since the founding of the State [of Israel]”.1


and biological activities and phenomena of this dynamic environment from seafloor to sea surface.2


Electrical power in excess of 5kW is sent


to the seafloor to power systems and sensors whose information is reported back to the Oceanography Centre in realtime for processing and posting usable forecasts and model output on their website. This knowledge is readily available and used by the scientific community, commercial shipping and fishermen alike.


Hydrocarbons are not the only geological feature of interest lurking beneath the seafloor of the Cyprus EEZ. The Eastern Mediterranean is also one of the most seismically active regions in the world. Because the Mediterranean basin is almost entirely landlocked, all the neighbouring coastal countries are at risk of being impacted by a tsunami. Figure 4 depicts the area’s tsunamigenic zones.3


The rectangular boxes with


numbers refer to the active regions: (1) Bartin-Amasra shelf in the southwest Black Sea; (2) Sea of Marmara; (3) North Aegean trough; (4) Gulf of Corinth; (5) Western Hellenic arc; (6) south of Crete; (7) Eastern Hellenic arc; (8) the Cyclades; (9) Sefenhisar-Kusadasi in West Turkey; (10) southwest of the Cyprus arc; and (11) Dead Sea fault zone and Levantine Sea. The arrows indicate the relative motions of the tectonic plates and the dots represent earthquake magnitude 4.0 or greater recorded over a 35-year period. It is the Cyprus and Eastern Hellenic Arcs that pose the most immediate near-field threat in the Eastern Mediterranean.


In order to help protect the lives and livelihoods of an increasing coastal population, in 2010 commercial partner to the Cyprus Oceanography Centre, CSnet International Inc., together with their affiliate company CSnet (CYPRUS), Ltd., set about expanding the CYCOFOS scientific observatory so that it may also serve as the prototype Tsunami Warning and Early Response system for Cyprus (TWERC). This involved adding a number of nodes or seafloor junction boxes interconnecting an array of sensors designed to detect seismic events and to determine whether or not these have been sufficient to generate a potentially dangerous


The Levantine Basin, south of Cyprus, is also an area deserving of the significant attention it receives from oceanographers and undersea explorers. It is rich with history, sunken antiquities, unique flora, fauna, spectacular seafloor features and habitats for several unique aquatic species. In 2004, a public-private sector collaboration led to the deployment of the Cyprus Coastal Ocean Forecasting and Observing System (CYCOFOS) observatory, depicted in Figure 2. This satellite telemetry buoy moored to the seafloor by a fibre optic cable, together with a fleet of autonomous sea gliders (see Figure 3) operated by the Cyprus Oceanography Centre in Nicosia have, for the past six years, been continuously monitoring oceanographic, chemical, meteorological


© TOUCH BRIEFINGS 2011


Andrew Clark, founder and CEO of CSnet International Inc., began his maritime career in the offshore oilfields of the Gulf of Mexico 37 years ago. Prior to starting up CSnet, he founded and served as President of Maritime Communication Service (MCS) a wholly owned subsidiary of HARRIS Corp that acquired both CapRock and Schlumberger Global Connectivity to become the world’s largest provider of offshore communications. Dr Clark was formerly Director of R&D at Harbor Branch


Oceanographic Institute. He is on the faculty and Board of Directors of the Florida Institute of Technology and his PhD is from University of Hawaii. Andrew holds both US and International Patents for unique underwater vehicle systems and has authored over fifty technical and scientific publications. He is Past President of the Marine Technology Society, a Trustee of the Link Foundation and currently serves on the US National Committee to the UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC).


E: aclark@CSnetINTL.com


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