Benthos Community Monitoring of A Dumping Area During Liquid Natural Gas Plant Construction

Abstract

According to the technical-economic substantiation (TES) of the Project "Sakhalin-II-Phase 2", 2 marine exploration platforms are being constructed, one of them in the Lunskoye gas field. They will be connected by pipelines to the oil terminal in Aniva Bay (south coast of Sakhalin island) for year round exploration. Another structure, a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant, was also built in 2003 near stm. Prigorodnoye on the Aniva Bay shore. The Contractor for this work is CTSD Ltd. The LNG terminal and a material operations facility (MOF) comprise the LNG plant infrastructure. A dredging operation was needed in the area of the terminals prior to construction to provide ships safe approach and mooring. The dumping of dredged material was approved for Aniva Bay outside of a 12 mile zone where water depth was between 60-65 m. The Project realization includes a complex environmental monitoring program. The primary research objective was to monitor marine biota and the surrounding environment of the dredging and dumping areas in Aniva Bay. One of the main monitoring tasks of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for the project was to specify the forecast estimation of the impact on the benthic community and the process of restoring the original abundance and structure of the affected area. FSUE "Sakhalin Fishery and Oceano-graphy Research Institute" (SFORI or SakhNIRO) was responsible for conducting this research based on the Agreement with CTSD Ltd. The schedule of observations includes the following phases: before dredging, during dumping and upon completion.