Task Force on Oil Spill Preparedness: A Canadian On-Shore Evaluation

1991 ◽  
Vol 1991 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wayne O. Wiebe ◽  
Paul Wotherspoon
Keyword(s):  
Oil Spill ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Task Force ◽  
Oil Industry ◽  
Regulatory Agencies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Oil Pipelines ◽  
Overall Evaluation ◽  
Offshore Activities

ABSTRACT The oil industry's ability to effectively contain and clean up oil spills has been questioned over the years, and recent events have heightened this concern. Growing public interest and efforts by the upstream oil industry in Canada to assess its operations resulted in formation of the Task Force on Oil Spill Preparedness. The study was sponsored by the Canadian Petroleum Association and the Independent Petroleum Association of Canada, which represent most companies in the upstream industry. The overall evaluation concentrates on both onshore and offshore activities, but this paper discusses only the onshore segment. In the past 40 years the industry has made substantial efforts to prevent oil spills. As a result, Canada has experienced no catastrophic oil spills in operating about 40,000 producing wells and 37,000 km of oil pipelines. In spite of these efforts, the industry believes there is room for improvement. The study recommends allocating more resources to improving equipment, training on-site personnel, establishing better communications within companies and between companies and regulatory agencies, and continuing research in oil spill countermeasures. These recommendations are being incorporated in the existing framework to improve the response capability of the upstream oil industry.

25 years of collaboration: the Pacific States/British Columbia Oil Spill Task Force 1989–2014

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-62
Author(s):  
Sarah Brace
Keyword(s):  
British Columbia ◽  
Oil Spill ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Task Force ◽  
Mutual Aid ◽  
Regulatory Oversight ◽  
Task Force Member ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Pacific

ABSTRACT Two significant west coast spill incidents, the barge Nestucca spill in B.C. in 1988 and the tanker Exxon Valdez spill of 1989 catalyzed the formal creation of the Pacific States/British Columbia Oil Spill Task Force, a union of Alaska, California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. Hawaii joined 12 years later and for the past 25 years the Task Force member organizations have collaborated on numerous projects and policy initiatives that have significantly influenced how the west coast prevents, prepares for and responds to oil spills. This paper will: 1) Provide an overview of how the Task Force functions and how it fosters collaboration between industry, agencies, and other stakeholders in the region; 2) Highlight key projects and accomplishments from the past two decades, including Transboundary coordination, vessel traffic risk studies, mutual aid agreements, and federal regulatory oversight; and how these projects were initiated and carried out; 3) Offer examples of how the Task Force is looking at challenges ahead, such as the shifting landscape of energy transportation and emerging fuels in the region, and what this means for spill prevention and response.

scholarly journals OIL SPILL LIABILITY AND COMPENSATION (“SUPERFUND”)

1977 ◽  
Vol 1977 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
James J. Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
Oil Spill ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Compensation System ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Status ◽  
Substantial Progress ◽  
Adequate Coverage ◽  
Legislative Changes ◽  
Double Coverage ◽  
Compensation Law

ABSTRACT The subjects under consideration are the liability imposed upon shippers, producers, refiners, and other handlers of oil, and the compensation monies available to persons damaged from oil spills. The liability and compensation system in existence today is one that provides little or no coverage in some instances, adequate coverage in some instances, and double coverage in still other instances. It has been correctly described as a “patchwork.” In the past three years, concerted efforts have been made by industry, government, and environmentalists to legislate improvements to the system. An attempt to enact a comprehensive oil spill liability and compensation law made substantial progress in the last Congress. This paper reviews the system as it now exists, the problems caused by the existing system, the proposed legislative changes, and the status of the legislation today.

OIL SPILL PREPAREDNESS: THE OIL INDUSTRY AND THE NATIONAL ARRANGEMENTS

1995 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 830
Author(s):  
D.J. Blackmore
Keyword(s):  
Oil Spill ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Oil Industry ◽  
State Governments ◽  
National Plan ◽  
Effective Response ◽  
Current State ◽  
Oil Spill Response ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Definition Of

It is vital that there is a credible and well organised arrangement to deal with oil spills in Australia.The National Plan to Combat Pollution of the Sea by Oil, the umbrella oil spill response plan for Australia, is a combined effort by the Commonwealth and State Governments, the oil industry and the shipping industry.The Australian Marine Oil Spill Centre (AMOSC), formed in 1991, is an industry centre set up for rapid response with equipment and resources, together with a training and industry coordination role.A review of the National Plan in 1992, identified, amongst a number of issues, that the National Plan needed to be re-focussed, to ensure full integration of all government and industry activities for the first time. This has led to greatly improved understanding between government and industry and significant improvements to Australia's oil spill response preparedness. The National Plan review has also resulted in a clearer definition of the responsibilities for operational control, together with the organisational structure to deliver a successful response.The current state of Australia's National Plan is such that it does provide confidence that there is the capacity to deliver an effective response to oil spills in the marine environment. Nevertheless, there is more to be done, particularly in the areas of planning and exercises.

“An Inevitable Consequence:” Changing Ideas of Prevention in the Wake of Catastrophic Events

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 412-438
Author(s):  
TERESA SABOL SPEZIO
Keyword(s):  
Greenhouse Gases ◽  
Oil Spill ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Oil Industry ◽  
Visual Evidence ◽  
The Face ◽  
Policy Transformation ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Oil Spill Cleanup ◽  
Spilled Oil

AbstractIn the face of technology failures in preventing oil from reaching beaches and coasts after catastrophic oil spills in the 1960s and early 1970s, the oil industry and governmental officials needed to quickly reconsider their idea of prevention. Initially, prevention meant stopping spilled oil from coating beaches and coasts. Exploring the presentations at three oil-spill conferences in 1969, 1971 and 1973, this idea of prevention changed as the technological optimism of finding effective methods met the realities of oil-spill cleanup. By 1973, prevention meant stopping oil spills before they happened. This rapid policy transformation came about because the oil industry could not hide the visual evidence of the source of their technology failures. In this century, as policymakers confront invisible pollutants such as pesticides and greenhouse gases, considering ways to visually show the source of the pollution along with the effects could quicken policy decisions.

FIRST AFRICAN OIL SPILL COOPERATIVE: CLEAN NIGERIA ASSOCIATES

1987 ◽  
Vol 1987 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-156
Author(s):  
Godwin E. Omene ◽  
E. C. Odogwu ◽  
Tom E. Allen
Keyword(s):  
Oil Spills ◽  
Oil Industry ◽  
General Purpose ◽  
Oil Field ◽  
Competitive Bidding ◽  
Oil Companies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Port Harcourt ◽  
Petroleum Companies ◽  
Production Areas

ABSTRACT In November 1981 the petroleum companies operating in Nigeria formed a cooperative with the general purpose of developing an oil industry-sponsored organization for combating oil spills. The organization was named Clean Nigeria Associates (CNA). Individual oil companies operating in Nigeria now have and have had in the past the capability to combat oil spills, but most were unprepared to handle major oil spills. Thus, the main thrust of the cooperative was to develop an equipment stockpile and response capability commensurate with major spill risks. Through competitive bidding, Halliburton Nigeria, Ltd. was selected as the cooperative contractor. Agreements were formally signed in September 1984. Since that time the equipment required by the association was procured by Halliburton and put in place at two locations, Warri and Port Harcourt. These two locations were selected because of their proximity to major production areas. Bases were established at Nigerian Ports Authority facilities which were set aside for oil field operations. Thus, equipment warehouses are in excellent positions to respond to marine spills, and to respond to land spills by road. The equipment stockpile consists of 27,000 ft of booms, 28 skimmers—both for protected waters and offshore, 4,000 bales of sorbents, 26 pumps, 14 boats (ten 15 ft and four 49 ft) and an assortment of vehicles and other support equipment. CNA has a dedicated staff of 38. The staff consists of management, equipment operators, mechanics, boat crews, and support personnel. Since December 1984, training of national personnel on spill response and safety has been a high priority and has continued to this date.

TIER-2 IN EAST ASIA1: CHALLENGES AND ANSWERS

2008 ◽  
Vol 2008 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-55
Author(s):  
Alexander Nicolau
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Oil Industry ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Tier 2 ◽  
International Media ◽  
The Past ◽  
Tier 1 ◽  
Tier 3 ◽  
And Training

ABSTRACT On numerous occasions, East Asia has been affected by marine oil spills incidents, originating from tankers and other types of ships. Important spills incidents that involved the IOPC Funds in the last decade (e.g. Nakhodka, Evoikos, Natuna Sea and Solar 1 …) indicate an average occurrence of one spill per year. This figure remains significantly high when considering that some States in the region are still not parties to international compensation regimes. In addition, numerous incidents do not benefit of international media coverage, thus making them often unnoticed. Lower scale incidents (within the range of hundreds of tonnes) occur on a more frequent basis and may appear trivial to respond to. Nevertheless, they represent the same range of difficulties experienced during larger scale incidents (logistics, suitable means to apply dispersants promptly and effectively, availability of temporary storage, lack of plan and training …) In terms of response, the ultimate authority in the coordination of spill response activities is in the hands of Government Agencies. However, the equipment and manpower available belong in various proportions to both Government Agencies and the Oil Industry. The latter operates numerous oil terminals and offshore facilities and is responsible to respond to minor spills defined as Tier 1. In the case of a large spill that exceeds the on-site capability, Tier 3 Cooperatives funded by the vast majority of major companies were created to assist and complement the local response, by offering access to a large range of special supplementary resources and services, such as the Airborne Dispersant Delivery System. Whilst Tiers 1 and 3 are well defined and are respectively synonyms of small and huge oil spill incidents, there is a lack of clarity and consistency in-between, thus making the Tier 2 response difficult to define. This gap that is often underestimated and may result in a preparedness weakness leading to unfortunate consequences. The aim of this paper is to analyse the Tier-2 response requirements and to discuss on the challenges of implementing effective measures in a region where the only imports of crude oil of China have more than doubled in the past five years.

The Exxon Valdez disaster: environmental safety implementation in an incrementalist mode

1998 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomas Hellström
Keyword(s):  
Oil Spill ◽  
Oil Industry ◽  
Environmental Safety ◽  
Regulatory Control ◽  
Potential Outcomes ◽  
Regulatory Agencies ◽  
Exxon Valdez ◽  
Safety Measures ◽  
Human Organization ◽  
Implementation Failure

This article develops a view on environmental risk as produced by some of the dynamics of human organization, i.e. political and economic as well as communicative factors acting together to create a failure-prone context. The empirical focus is the implementation of environmental safety that grew out of many years of inter-organizational interaction between the oil industry and regulatory agencies in Alaska, and which was highlighted by the notorious Exxon Valdez oil-spill in 1989. In the article it is argued that failure to prepare for (or to avoid) a catastrophe of this kind represents a safety implementation failure, and that such a failure usually encompasses systemic causes stretching far beyond the immediate context of the actual occurrence of the event. The study sets out to show how, in the Exxon Valdez case, the failure of an inter-organizational culture to implement basic safety measures resulted from an incremental but systematic decrease in regulatory control, the emergence of counterproductive bargaining between corporate bodies, conflict-oriented policy-making with respect to oil-spill hazards and a misjudgement of the potential outcomes of an oil spill.

VESSEL RESPONSE PLANS: A TILE IN THE MOSAIC OF THE NATIONAL RESPONSE SYSTEM1

1995 ◽  
Vol 1995 (1) ◽  
pp. 926-926
Author(s):  
Duane Michael Smith
Keyword(s):  
Oil Spill ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Oil Pollution ◽  
The Past ◽  
Response System ◽  
National Response ◽  
Vessel Response ◽  
Oil Spill Response

ABSTRACT With the implementation of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 came the requirement for vessels to develop plans for responding to oil spills from their vessels. While some companies had such plans in the past, the National Response System did not formally recognize their existence. Individual vessel response plans must now be viewed as an integral part of the National Response System. All of the parties that could be involved in an oil spill response must begin to view themselves as one tile of many that make up the mosaic known as the National Response System.

A Guide to Response Evaluation for Oil Spill Combat in Japan

1991 ◽  
Vol 1991 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-91
Author(s):  
Ken Matsumoto
Keyword(s):  
Oil Spill ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Oil Industry ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Response Evaluation ◽  
Response Elements ◽  
Future Improvement ◽  
The Future ◽  
Oil Spill Response ◽  
Overall Performance

ABSTRACT There are many ways to evaluate the overall performance of an oil spill response operation. There is, or there should be, however, a common standpoint for looking at such operations, irrespective of the size of the spill. Lessons learned through an incident, however trivial, can provide valuable clues to the future improvement of the operation in refineries and oil terminals. But the number of incidents at one location is too few to stand the test of analysis. Evaluation by a variety of methods is now possible based on information and data available through the worldwide news and reporting networks. This paper presents a guideline, which is widely accepted by the Japanese oil industry, for evaluating responses to oil spills, and introduces a concise equation based on the rating of many response elements.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document