Offshore oil production is a priori coupled with potential negative impacts on the environment, fishing and recreation. Accidents and attendant oil spills were and remain inevitable satellites of almost all operations in production, transport and storage of oil at sea and on land. Thereby oil spills are merely the one from many natural and technogenic sources of oil inflow into marine environment, and severity of spills impact is not always determined by their volume. It is marked in the article, that about half of the global oil flow into the marine environment has a natural origin as a result of natural outputs (unloadings) of oil and gas fluids on the seabed. Meanwhile, the marine oil and gas complex is responsible only for 20% of the total oil inflow into the world ocean, and emergency spills make up only 10 % of the cumulative oil flow into the marine environment.
It is shown that artificial reefs are one of the effective ways to increase bioproductivity and self-clarification ability of marine environment. Complex and systemic application of artificial reefs in sea platform oil production consists in the use of original natural processes for biodegradation of oil in the marine environment in the passive participation of subsurface user. Thereby biocenosis organisms are bioindicators of the state of the marine environment and biota and provide long-term self-clarification and protection of the marine environment from oil pollution, not requiring operator maintenance.
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