PAJ workshop 2009
Petroleum Association of JapanOil Spill Response Workshop 2009
Mr David Salt
Operations Director
Oil Spill Response Limited
Southampton, UK

Oil Industry Spill Response Arrangements
The oil industry recognised some years ago that there was a need to improve the response to oilspills based on experience gained over the 1970 and early 80’s. The key issue at the time was thespills arising from tanker operations either on a routine operational basis or through accidents. To
deliver a response that reflected the risk / frequency profile it was determined by the industry thatthe nature of incidents could be divided into three tiers, as described below.
TierDefinition

Tier 1

Small operational type spills that may occur within a location as a result of daily
activities. The level at which a response operation could be carried out
successfully using individual resources and without assistance from others.

Tier 2

A medium sized spill within the vicinity of a company’s location where
immediate resources are insufficient to cope with the incident and further
resources may be called in on a mutual aid basis. A Tier 2 incident may involve
Local Government.

Tier 3A large spill where substantial further resources are required and support froma national (Tier 3) or international co-operative stockpile may be necessary. A
Tier 3 incident is beyond the capability of both local and regional resources.
This is an incident that requires national assistance through the implementationof the National Contingency Plan and will be subject to Government controls.

As described above tier 1 was the operational spill that might occur as a consequence of routine
operations such as one arising from a tank overflow, hose rupture or valve mis-operation. The
response to a spill of this nature would be expected to be handled by the facility involved and not
require much external intervention, although in reality, in today’s climate, the reaction might belimited to just the initial containment of an incident. These spills account for the greatest proportionof incidents by far, but processes and management controls are continuously being devised andimplemented by the industry to prevent this type of spill. The impact of these types of spills is
generally small, but in the event that the problem becomes chronic, the industry will rapidly facepublic and government censure to improve performance and minimise their occurrence. However, it
should also be remembered that a small spill of very persistent oil in a highly sensitive environment

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might have a major impact, it is also clear that even small tier 1 spills are becoming increasingly
more expensive as demonstrated below.
IncidentYear

Oil Spilt

Total Cost $Cost $/ tonne

Cosco Busan (USA)

2007

83

80,000,000$963,855

Prestige (Spain)

2002

63,0001,443,000,000$22,904

Erika (France)

1999

19,800247,500,000$12,500Sea Empress (UK)1996

73,00055,200,000$756

Braer (UK)1993

84,00078,000,000$928

Exxon Valdez (USA)1989

37,0001,950,000,000$52,702

Amoco Cadiz (France)

1978

223,000

225,000,000$1,009Source: Itopf
The tier 2 incident is more serious, and in the main, the response will be coordinated by thegovernment and use combined resources from either local industry or Government. In mature oilprovinces there is often the opportunity to establish mutual aid agreements with other operators or
the governments may have resources. In other locations there may be very few additional resources,in these instances it is usual to see the tier 1 capability extended to fill the gap, the size of thisadditional capability should be governed by the time it takes for any additional resources to become
available and be able to be put to use. Tier 2 is the most difficult capability to define and requires atrue understanding of the actual meaning of what a response capability really is to be sure it candeliver an effective response. It is not based on simply numerical equipment capability but acomplex mix of equipment, manpower, organisational structure, training, logistics organisation andreadiness. To try and simplify it into its component parts does it no justice.
The tier 3 response facility provided by the oil industry is aimed at providing support to these local
resources should they be required. These responses do not operate in a vacuum and can only be ofvalue if integrated into the overall activity and with the acceptance of the host country. If they are
not, then they cannot assist in delivering the most effective response possible.
The inertia in response can come from a number of areas.
••••

Failure to recognise the severity of an incident and the need for additional resources
Failure to arrange the processes to permit access for equipment resources of personnel
Failure to integrate the resources available into a coherent response plan
Lack of decisive action when assessing initial event and mobilising resources in a timely
fashion.

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Experience has shown that all of these factors play a part and often make an appearance in incident
debriefs. The ratification of the International Convention on Oil Pollution Preparedness Responseand Cooperation, (OPRC1990) should meant that those acceding to the convention have the plans
and arrangements in place to facilitate response cooperation, in reality the processes and legislation
have not been sufficiently well developed to permit this to occur.
Oil Spill Response Limited was established in 1984 as a non profit making industry cooperative toprovide such response support. It currently has over 30 oil companies as participants who are ineffect shareholders in the organisation. In addition there are over 70 Associate members who,
rather than be shareholders in the organisation, simply require services from us.
In the early days, the organisation merely provided response equipment and operations staff todeploy it. Over recent years the role has extended to provide not only this support but technicalexpertise to the industry to assist in determining the response strategies. This has come about due
to the changes in the industry and an increasing demand from our members to deliver as muchadded value as possible in return for their participation. The profile of staff has changed with anincreasing emphasis on technical advice and response strategy support being provided in additionto the old response equipment deployment roles.
To deliver its response capability Oil Spill Response operates two Hercules aircraft, these aircraft inparticular are used as an operating for the ADDS pack, (Aerial Dispersant Delivery system), one of
our principle response tools well suited to the treatment of large marine oil spills when they areamenable to chemical dispersion in environments where the strategy can provide a benefit to theenvironment through its use. The organisation also operates considerable stocks of offshore
response equipment and shoreline protection and clean up equipment. This is stocked in our basesin Southampton, Singapore and Bahrain. In addition to the Hercules aircraft, Oil Spill Response uses
the services of a dedicated broker to deliver equipment. This is packaged in aircraft style containers
and if fully documented and packaged in a way that it can be transported to the spill site. During
2008 over 1000 tons of response equipment and emergency response resources were deployedfrom Southampton and Singapore in response to over 30 incidents around the globe.
The oil industry has changed considerably over the years and from the inception of Oil Spill Response
the structure of our member companies and nature of the emergencies that we face has changed.
The organisation was originally conceived to deal with international shipping emergencies,
thankfully in terms of the tanker industry the frequency of these have greatly declined, due toincreased legislation, better regulation and management and a renewal of tanker tonnage due to theconsequences of these changes. This requirement was driven from the corporate parts of the oilindustry where shipping generally resided, what we have seen more recently is a need to engage ourmembers in a different way, as due to the changes in industry, the oil industry operational business
units now equally represent our customers, this is particularly true of the upstream industry.
To do this we have opened offices in Bahrain, Aberdeen Indonesia and have increased our local
footprint in West Africa and Libya. In today’s’ climate it is no longer acceptable to sit at home andexpect to be called, the drive is for increased members support, contact and added value.

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In the past year as mentioned Oil Spill Response has been involved in multiple incidents, on twooccasions during the year responding to five spills simultaneously. Two particular incidents of notein the past 18 months in the region were the Heibi Spirit in Korea and secondly the Pacific Alliance in
Malaysian Waters. Each provide different opportunities to understand some of the issues in spill
response.
Heibi Spirit
The Heibi Spirit was interesting as it demonstrated the impact of decision making on theeffectiveness of a dispersant response. The vessel was damaged in a collision whilst at anchor insevere weather and was holed by a drifting crane barge. Oil Spill Response in Singapore becameaware of the incident very early after it occurred and offered its resources. Local Government
resources were quickly deployed as an initial response and initially believed to be sufficient to deal
with the situation, a poor weather situation meant that the oil spill, whilst only being a total of
10,300 tons of various grades of crude, spread quickly and impacted large areas of the coastline,
impacting high value tourist areas, fisheries and sensitive coastal habitats. There was an ensuing
public outcry and backlash and After a period of more than a week a request was made by theGovernment for the aircraft from Singapore to deploy to Korea to assist the spraying operation. The
initial reaction was to advise against the deployment as the oil had spread so far and the layer
thickness become so thin that it did not present a viable target. The request from the government
was repeated and the aircraft deployed. The overall response value of the operation was limited anda total of just 4 tons of dispersant was able to be placed on the target. The episode goes to prove a
number of issues in spill response
1) Decision making in spill response should be rapid and integrated2) Early decision are needed for effective intervention.
3) Politics can quickly overwhelm technical response decisions as a situation deteriorates.
Pacific Alliance
The Pacific Alliance grounded in Malaysia waters in November 2008. The damage to the ship wassignificant with the hull being penetrated in way of ballast tanks. The pump room was flooded
preventing an easy ship to ship transfer operation to remove the cargo and a careful salvage
operation was carried out to lighter the ship and remove it from its was grounded location.
Following this, the ships pump were brought back into action and the ship safely discharged withouta drop of oil being spilled. During these lightering and salvage operations oil spill response resources
including at sea recovery resources, the ADDs pack in Singapore, an Ag tractor crop spraying aircraftin Malaysia, an additional 50 tons of dispersant to complement the existing 100 tons of stock inSingapore, shoreline response equipment from Pimmag in Malaysia and Singapore. The whole
exercise was conducted in a controlled manner with all of these resources available to mitigate any
spill risk. All in all the response provided a very model of response readiness.

The presentation will detail the discussion on Oil spill response and a limited pictorial record of theincidents described.

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