Towards the development of subsidence monitoring strategies for offshore platforms in Malaysian waters using GPS technique

• Main Authors: Othman, Rusli, Setan, Halim
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: UNSW 2005
• Subjects: TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
• Online Access: http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/1667/1/CairnsAustralia05.doc; http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/1667/; https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-540-49350-1

Between the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia and the west coast of Sabah and Sarawak lies the South China Sea, which locates more than a dozen of offshore platforms, which extract oil and gas for major oil production companies such as PETRONAS and SHELL. One of the major problems faced by these platforms is the occurrence of subsidence due to gas withdrawal, which may cause disaster to man and the platform itself. Since these offshore stations are located hundreds of kilometers from shore, the GPS technique is seemed the only possible method that enable subsidence monitoring to be carried out by geodetic method. This paper will look at the potential of GPS technique for monitoring of subsidence of these platforms in Malaysian waters and the use of BERNESE software for data processing. The existence of MASS stations in Peninsular Malaysia and in Sabah and Sarawak that continuously logging in data throughout the years give an option in data gathering for carrying out subsidence monitoring of offshore platforms. These MASS stations are maintained by the Department Surveying and Mapping Malaysia; and the GPS data are made available to the publics. This of course helps geodesists in using these GPS data and together with GPS data collected at those offshore platforms will allow subsidence detection to be carried out. The practicality of using these GPS data collected at those MASS stations and strategies used in subsidence monitoring of offshore platforms in Malaysian waters will be discussed.