TOWARDS A MORE ACCURATE FLOW RATE ESTIMATION TECHNIQUE FOR OIL SPILLS FROM PIPELINES

In 2010, an oil rig on the Gulf of Mexico exploded and sunk into the ocean. A leak was discovered on the seabed one mile under the sea. Different techniques were employed to quantify the amount of oil leaked into the ocean, however their results varied quite significantly. The most accurate method to date is a standard deviation of 2.6% by Crone using Optical Plume Velocimetry (OPV). In this work, a novel method to estimate the flow rate with a higher accuracy is sought