Petroleum Association of JapanOil Spill International Conference 2000.
by Arthie F. Smith
Director and Chief Executive
OSRL“ The Importance of Oil Spill Response Exercises”
Examining the gap between exercises and actual oil spill incident responses.

The importance of exercising
An effective response to any emergency situation is dependent upon theability and knowledge of those responding. Very clearly an effective response
plan provides the guidance for the responders and gives ready access to thetools they will need. The responders therefore must be familiar with this planand have had the opportunity to try it, use it and develop it. The plan must beexercised and it must be exercised in advance of an emergency situation.
Making mistakes is one of the most powerful learning tools, it is how we
discovered what “hot” means. It is not a good idea to make those mistakes ina real incident.
As professionals we understand the importance of exercising and we go to
great lengths to develop structured programmes and meaningful exercises.
There remains however a great difference around the world as to theunderstanding of the requirements of an oil spill exercise and in the frequency
or indeed the need for them. This is changing with the introduction of theOPRC convention and the requirement that signatories to that convention
should have in place a published programme of exercises. We are seeing
this being enforced now in the UK. In addition to this of course there has beena requirement in the USA under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 for an
established programme of response exercises, the “PREP” programme.
IPIECA and IMO recognise the importance of this subject and in their
excellent joint publication “Guide to Oil Spill Exercise Planning” and state thatthe purpose of conducting the exercise is to test the plan, the equipment andthe capabilities of the response team. They also point out that no exercise
therefore is complete without assessment and review that will lead torecommendations for improvements to the plan, that availability of resourcesor the training of personnel. The “Guiding Principles” included in thatpublication illustrates how to get the most out of the effort put into oil spill
exercises.

Guiding Principles§ Ensure the management form the top down supports the exercise
activity.
§ Set clear realistic and measurable objectives§ The thrust of the exercise must be to improve not impress.
§ Simpler more frequent exercises lead to faster improvements initially.
§ Do not tackle complex exercises until personnel are experienced andcompetent.
§ Too many activities, locations and participants can overcomplicate
and exercise§ Evaluating the exercise successfully is as important s conducting it
successfully.
§ Planning and conducting a successful exercise is a significant
accomplishment.
What Constitutes a Good Exercise?
Exercises come in different forms and will be used for different reasons andterminology varies. The table below illustrates the types advocated byIMO/IPIECA and those under the PREP Programme.
Table1 – General Exercise Type Comparison
IPIECA / IMO
Internal(Industry)•

Notification••

Equipment
Deployment•••

Table Top•

Incident Management

Qualified Individual
Notification
Equipment
Deployment

Emergency
Procedures• SpillManagement
Team Table Top

PREP
External(Agency)(Area)• Notification(Area)• Equipment
Deployment(Area)• SpillManagement
Team Table Top(Area)• Area Exercise

The importance of having different categories of spill exercise is that they willallow different aspects of the plan to be exercised separately and it promotes
understanding of the purpose and scope of the whole plan. To be effective
however the exercise must achieve the objectives set and must test all theparties. These parties must of necessity include all those that will be involvedin the event of a real incident. Thus it is meaningless for a major exercise not
to include government and representatives of other interested parties if anincident will require their input. The added value in this is of course that
regular exercising with these different parties will go a long way to building
relationships that will be invaluable in the event of a real incident.
It is tempting also to load an exercise with as much reality as can begenerated, but caution must be exercised not to put too much pressure on
and defeat the objects through unnecessarily undermining the participants. It
is recognised that response groups can be overwhelmed quickly by repeatedorganisational and public affairs challenges (both in actual emergencies andin exercises) but to do this in an exercise when trying to establish the basicsof the plan would be completely counter to the objectives. Rather wait untilthat part of the plan is in need of testing and introduce the scenarios then.
A good exercise therefore is one that will deliver the benefits that we know
will arise from regular exercising. They are;
§ Working together as a team and making complex and potentially far
reaching decisions that would not normally be expected of theparticipants.
§ Proving of plans and procedures.
§ Developing credibility with governments and the public.
§ Developing individuals skills.
§ To enable people who do not normally work together to understand eachothers goals and to develop trust between them.
We will know that we have done this only with a proper evaluation which initself is critical to the continual improvement of emergency and crisis
response capabilities A good exercise therefore will have evaluation as anintegral part of it’s programme. Other key parts are the setting of realistic
objectives, the development of a proper plan, a scenario that has been wellthought out and communicated to all parties and a properly controlled
programme. The evaluation phase must be planned in advance in order thatdata can be collected from players and observers and fed back while they
are still immersed in the exercise , the “hot wash-up”. Following that adetailed analysis of the events should be undertaken and a detailed reportwith recommendations produced. Again the IMO/IPIECA Guide to Oil Spill
Exercise Planning shows this very clearly.

Can an exercise replicate the real thing?
We can make an exercise meaningful as we have seen above through thesetting of clear objectives and working with others to deliver good
recommendations to bring about changes to the plans. We can learn fromthis and we can teach others. We can also make exercises realistic throughany number of different methods starting with the unannounced call-out. Drills
and exercises that we in OSRL have been involved in have included flying ourHercules aircraft with personnel and equipment great distances, coordinating with merchant and naval vessels and often many different
government agencies. The most realistic scenarios however sometimes
come from unexpected sources, such as when students were recruited todemonstrate against a spill outside an exercise command centre and werethen joined by some who thought it for real and invaded the centre. Local
media picking up the activity of the exercise and believing it to be a real spill
can also be an embarrassment. It is possible also that we can load theexercise participants and players to the same state of exhaustion that theywould likely experience when involved in a real spill but this will never be thereal thing and we should not try to make it such.
Different priorities exist during a real emergency and these are most likelynot those that we wish to test in an exercise. The value of many exercises isin developing small key points to improve our overall responsiveness. It must
be remembered also that a big issue is in the testing of a government
response. We in industry are well funded to train and exercise. This is not thesame in government and we have a role to play in working with them toimprove the overall outcome. A real spill brings different priorities to many
government departments and we must avoid being caught in those traps.
Rather we should be aware of them and help those responsible to work with
us to achieve the main response objectives.
What should we expect in the future.
Crystal ball gazing is notoriously inaccurate and often leaves the person who
made the prediction with a “red face”. It is the authors belief however that a
few things are very likely to come about and that we should be prepared forthem and wherever use them to our advantage.
It is most likely that we will see more imposition of statutory requirements foroil spill exercises and drills. This in itself means more interference from otheragencies particularly in the type of exercise we must undertake but also in thefrequency. At the same time we can expect the imposition of observers andperhaps a need for more participation with those authorities. In itself this may
not be a bad thing except that the frequency and type being imposed may
produce a financial burden while not really achieving our objectives. A more
serious consequence may be in the imposition of pass/fail criteria. This will

inevitably be based on the regulatory authorities assessment of achieving
objectives which again are most likely not industry’s.
A more welcome change to our oil spill exercises may well be in the use of IT.
This will not just add realism, particularly when used in modelling andenabling better real time response planning, but in better recording andevaluating and in the communications between parties. We see this alreadyin the use of digital phones and computer links with digital photography. A
welcome development would be in the use of IT to replicate areas ofweakness and to test options either during the exercise or immediately afterin the evaluation phase.
Conclusion
Oil spill response exercising is important and a valuable tool for us all toimprove not only what we do but also our relationships with others. This isparticularly important with government bodies and other important agencies.
Realism in spill exercises is attractive and important in some scenarios but
the most important issue is the achievement of the objectives. This can easily
be destroyed by an overzealous approach to realism and too much pressure
on the participants.
We can not, and should not expect an exercise to be the real thing. We willlearn more from a structured programme of exercises focussed on important
issues of plan and responder development than we will from a real incident
when we may well find objectives “highjacked” for reasons we are not privy to.

Acknowledgements;
1. IMO/IPIECA Report Series Volume 2.
“Guide to Oil Spill Exercise Planning”.
2. David E Neilson.
“The Advantages, Costs and Pitfalls of International Drills andExercises.”Society of Petroleum Engineers Conference, Caracas 1998