Produced formation water discharge to marine environments from offshore Oil and Gas (O&G) operations is highly regulated, and environmental monitoring requirements can be onerous. The project aims to evaluate the potential for application of novel and emerging techniques to petroleum hydrocarbon monitoring. Successful application may reduce reliance on ‘end of pipe’ wet chemistry data, and better evaluate the hydrocarbon plume extent as it propagates away from the point of discharge. With advances in sensor technology, and improving economics for delivery methods such as satellites, unmanned aerial and underwater vehicles (UAV / AUV / ROV), monitoring of broader scale effects within the receiving environment is hypothesised to be a robust approach to managing O&G operations which may supplement traditional end-of-pipe techniques. Remote data collection has the potential to reduce or eliminate costly and high-risk vessel-based field campaigns. Field deployable autonomous sensors used to collect relatively low cost, high volume data can be used to evaluate the extent of discharge and demonstrate that impact & risks are adequately managed.