OOO LUKOIL-Nizhnevolzhskneft, a wholly-owned subsidiary of LUKOIL, summarized phase one of space monitoring in the northern part of the Caspian Sea in 2011.

The analysis of satellite images did not show any oil contaminations in the Severny license block connected with the operations at the production facilities of Yu. Korchagin field.

Most recorded contaminations resulted from the vessel discharges of petroleum contaminated waters, arising from their typical shape and close proximity to shipping lanes. For example, the largest spill occupying 69 square meters was recorded in the Russian sea sector 115 km south of LUKOIL’s license blocks.

Monitoring was performed by SCANEX Center for Engineering and Technology.

103 sessions of real-time satellite radar mapping of the North Caspian Sea area between February 1, 2011, and August 1, 2011, resulted in the reception and processing of 57 images from RADARSAT-1 satellite (50 m spatial resolution); 46 images, from ENVISAT satellite (150 m).

In addition, the project used optical low-resolution multi-spectral images from MODIS spectroradiometers at Terra and Aqua satellites, medium- and high-resolution images from Landsat-5 satellites, United States; and SPOT-4/-5, France; highly-detailed images from EROS-A/B satellites, Israel. During the monitoring period a total of more than 90 images from SPOT-4/-5 (2.5 to 20 m spatial resolution) and Landsat-5 (30 m) and 6 images from EROS-A/B (0.7 to 2 m) were received. Multi-spectral images from SPOT and Landsat-5 were used to identify the nature of certain film contaminations.

SCANEX, a center located in Moscow, organized non-stop reception and processing of radar images, which allows informing the customer of the detection of oil contamination with the shortest delay. Satellite information was provided to LUKOIL-Nizhnevolzhskneft using the webservice of LUKOIL-Kosmosnimki based on GeoMixer, Russian web technology.