Modelling of oil spill trajectory for 2011 Penglai 19-3 coastal drilling field, China

An oil particle trajectory model was developed and was applied to the 2011 Penglai 19-3 subsurface oil spill in the Chinese Bohai Sea. The three dimensional model simulated ocean currents fields and utilised meteorology data from the local measurement station to drift spilled oil. In such a model, the movement of the particles as the sum of deterministic advection and random diffusion were determined by using the Lagrangian algorithm. The simulation fitted well with observations of actual oil sightings, which showed that oil particles spread southeast/eastward to the Bohai Strait, China. This estimation agreed with actual official combat activities near the spill site during the month of the June–July, 2011.