Opportunity: Subsea Oil Discharge Source Identification Project

Amendment 0001 is hereby issued to provide answers to questions submitted by potential offerors. The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), has a requirement for a study titled "Subsea Oil Discharge Source Identification Project". This procurement is being conducted in accordance with FAR Part 15, Contracting by Negotiation. This is not a small business set-aside. The solicitation number is E17PS00077. The Government anticipates awarding a Firm-Fixed-Price type contract as a result of this solicitation. The period of performance is anticipated to be the date of award through 30 September 2017. The North American Industrial Classification Systems (NAICS) code is 541360, Geophysical Surveying and Mapping Services with a small business size standard of $15.0 million. All potential offerors must be registered in the System for Award Management (SAM) (www.sam.gov) in order to receive Government contracts. For more than 25 years, BSEE (and former organizations) have aggressively maintained a comprehensive, long-term research program dedicated to improving oil spill response options. The major focus of the program is to improve the methods and technologies used for oil spill detection, containment, treatment, recovery and cleanup. There is an ongoing oil discharge from the Mississippi Canyon area in the Gulf of Mexico leading to daily sheening. The specific source(s) of discharge at the site are not fully known. BSEE is proposing that reliable technology, deployed underwater, can be effective in tracking oil leaks and plumes in the water column with minimal false positive results. The goals and objectives of this project are to deploy sensor packages from a remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) to survey, detect, and map the location(s) of hydrocarbon emissions that are responsible for the surface oil spill and/or sheen footprint in the Mississippi Canyon Area and gather data to be used by BSEE in a subsequent hindcasting assessment of sedimentation rates at the site.