An understanding of Metocean – applied meteorology and oceanography –  is essential for the safe and efficient design, and operation, of offshore installations. It includes, primarily, the study of wind, wave, current and tidal conditions affecting a new or existing installation. However, other parameters, such as air and sea temperature, visibility and ice conditions may also be important, depending on the location and type of operations.

‘Once in a hundred years’ extreme metocean conditions need to be accounted for in the design stage – and estimating extreme values associated with return periods of 100 years and beyond is an area of active research.

An area in which Metocean practitioners are most active, concerns the definition of extreme events that could impact our offshore (and onshore) facilities. This is done within a probabilistic framework in which our structural engineers are aiming to design a build a facility that can withstand an event of a very low frequency – for example, the 1/1000 or 1/10,000 annual probability. For occupied offshore facilities, large waves in hurricanes and winter storms are of particular interest as these represent some of the largest life safety risks that our Member companies hold. This necessitates meticulous study and understanding of the frequency and magnitude of large ocean waves and has driven much of the committee’s activities over four decades of active work.

For a variety of weather sensitive offshore operations, an understanding – and ability to accurately predict –  metocean conditions are often critical and will enhance the safe execution and efficiency of Member’s most challenging offshore operations.

Twice a year, the Metocean community of the oil and gas industry arranges a week of meetings to discuss progress of the various Joint Industry Projects (JIPs), in which it funds and provides technical steer. These have included:

• Generating long historical (hindcast) databases of regions such as the South China Sea, West Africa and North Sea
• Developing new methods to set, for example, design wind speed, wave heights or current speed profiles.
• Comparing instruments such as wave sensors to ensure uncertainties and biases in measurement are well understood and knowledge on this fed back to manufacturers to ensure continuous improvement.
• Fundamental research into the physics underpinning extreme waves and highly non-linear ocean and atmospheric processes (e.g., solitons and squalls).
• Build knowledge and consensus on best-practise approaches for capturing long term trends in Metocean parameters. This includes trends induced by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions as well as multi-decadal ocean circulation phenomena that have significant effects on global climatology and extrema.

Attendance at the individual meetings is restricted to the participating company representatives unless the respective chairman has previously agreed otherwise beforehand.

The IOGP Metocean Committee meeting is generally the last meeting of JIP week and the day usually finishes with a presentation either on a new project initiative, or on a scientific topic of relevance to the industry, or by contractors with new products to demonstrate.

The JIP week also includes a series of “Expert Group” meetings, in which a subset of the IOGP Metocean members collaborate on “hot topics” or themes that are of current interest. Presently, the Committee has Expert Groups covering the following topics: Extreme Weather, Ocean Currents,
Climate Change, Hindcasts, Offshore Wind and Standards and Guidelines. These Expert Groups also meet multiple times during the year and report back to the main Committee on the final day’s larger Committee meeting.

The IOGP Metocean Committee meeting is generally the last meeting of JIP week and includes a summary of all Expert Groups activities and planned activities as well as a summary of all ongoing JIP meetings. The meeting usually finishes with a presentation either on a new project initiative, or on a scientific topic of relevance to the industry, or by contractors with new products to demonstrate.