Tuesday 11 September 2018

The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate just concluded a successful three-week data acquisition expedition on the Mohn’s ridge in the western part of the Norwegian Sea.

The Mohn’s ridge is a seafloor spreading ridge, separating two oceanic plates, and the objective of the expedition was to investigate the possible existence of mineral resource deposits in this area. The NPD has identified a large area of sulphide minerals, that was previously unknown. The deposits could include important industrial metals such as copper, zinc, cobalt, nickel, vanadium, wolfram and silver.

The NPD has been assigned the task of proving and mapping deep sea minerals after the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy was given administrative responsibility for mineral deposits on the Norwegian continental shelf.

During this year’s expedition, the NPD surveyed an area of 90 km x 35 km centrally located over the spreading ridge, where water depths vary between 1200 and 3500 metres. The expedition was conducted with the Seabed Worker vessel, which is owned by Swire Seabed AS.

NPD geologist Jan Stenløkk participated in the voyage. He tells us that the mapping was carried out using an autonomous underwater vehicle, Kongsberg Hugin AUV, which mapped the seabed in long corridors, totalling 750 kilometres. The AUV was equipped with several sensors, including seabed penetrating echo sounders. Other types of data collected include multibeam bathymetry, synthetic aperture sonar data, magnetometry and spontaneous potential field data. The AUV was operated by Ocean Floor Geophysics.

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