Preparedness for Oil Spills – New Challenges for the Oil Industry and for theResponder Community

Andrew Nicoll, Advocacy Manager - Oil Spill Response Limited

PAJ Symposium 7th March 2012

This presentation considers the best practice for building and maintaining oil spill preparedness in
the light of major changes to the planning regime necessitated primarily by the Macondo incident in
the Gulf of Mexico (2010), as seen through the eyes of a Tier 3 response organisation.
To set the context the speaker will say a few words about the history and development of Oil Spill
Response Limited (OSRL) as a Tier 3 response organisation and its role in the wider stakeholder
community.
Spill preparedness is nothing new but it seems to take a catastrophic incident every generation tofocus the world attention on how industries and governments collectively prepare to respond andoften drive legislation. Whilst The Macondo incident has formed the catalyst at this time, sometwenty years ago the spill response community was going through a comparable evolution as theimpacts and ramifications of the Exxon Valdez incident were being addressed through theInternational Maritime Organization (IMO). Then the consensus was that more needed to be done
to stimulate effective spill preparedness at the industry and governmental levels based upon thepremise that successful response is built upon good collaboration between the controlling
authorities and the responsible parties. The Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Cooperation
Convention (OPRC) of 1990 was the instrument to set out the agreed principles conveyed in its title
and the Global Initiative (GI) was the vehicle driven by IMO and IPIECA to promote the Convention tonational and regional, government and industry audiences.
The bedrock of OPRC is to have contingency plans which are developed in a framework that builds
upon the input of a wide range of stakeholders and also recognises the different scale of response
needed to counter spills that can have a range of impacts. A key component of contingency planning
is a Risk Assessment which is equally applicable to a platform or oil-handling facility as it is to anation or a sub-region. In 2010 the IMO produced a manual on Risk Evaluation and Assessment ofResponse Preparedness which is a useful guide for planners who first need to understand where thepotential sources and causes of oil spills come from. Twenty years ago, following the event thatprecipitated the OPRC convention the risk of oil spill to a maritime nation was primarily from ships
where typically the risk is “mobile” and of a “finite” quantity. Since then, a concerted international
effort to improve the safety and quality of maritime oil transportation has resulted in a dramatic
reduction in the frequency of oil spills from tankers. Over the same period the upstream oil industry
has moved into new regions often full of new operational, political and environmental challenges.

Sometimes things go wrong, as we have observed in the Montara Incident (Australia NW Shelf,2009) and even more dramatically in the Macondo incident (Gulf of Mexico, 2010).
These events have highlighted an underlying shift of oil spill risk focus, away from the traditional shipborne “mobile / finite volume” risk to one which emanates from a known, fixed location and a
volume which in some cases may be only limited by the length of time it takes to contain the leaking
source.
The Risk Assessment is therefore a critical foundation upon which to build the appropriate levels ofpreparedness. Having analysed the risks the IMO model leads us to two principle methods of risk
management, namely by reducing the likelihood of spills through spill prevention measures or by
reducing the consequence of spills when they do happen through preparedness measures. Spillprevention measures are outside the scope of this paper and so from hereafter I will only
concentrate on preparedness measures needed to mitigate the impact of spills.
Preparedness measures are the central tenets of the OPRC convention and can be distilled into thefollowing core elements:·Legislation and regulation·

Contingency Planning·

Response resources (equipment AND people)·Training·Exercising

In the aftermath of the Macondo and Montara incidents there have been a wide range of reports,
lessons learned, findings and recommendations, many of which have been published and are
publically available. In July 2010 the international oil industry formed three task-forces to consider
the lessons to be learned from these incidents in terms of prevention, well intervention and oil spill
response and in this latter field, 19 wide-ranging recommendations were published almost one year
ago in March 2011. Since then a Joint Industry Project (JIP) has been formed to implement theserecommendations and OSRL is, or will be, involved in the delivery of many of these outcomes, as canbe seen when we look in more detail at the elements of preparedness.
Legislation and regulation – Regulators around the world are examining the industry approach tospill planning and preparedness. Of particular interest is the regulators stance in respect of theoffshore exploration and production sector. In Europe regulators have typically employed a safetycase regime where the onus is placed on the operator to identify the salient risks and implement
appropriate mitigating measures which have to be approved by the regulator. In other regimes amore prescriptive planning regime has been in place where response measures are quantified andmandated according to state and federal laws. What is clear is that there is now a global shift of
expectation towards mitigating the Worst Case Scenario identified in the Risk Assessment rather
than just the most probable credible spill scenario previously identified.
Contingency Planning – Following Macondo there is increasing pressure on operators to establish
response measures for a Worst Case Scenario within their contingency plans for every risk bearing

location. Sometimes this pressure is not related to the identified risk and if left unchallenged, could
result in a proliferation of response equipment without a coherent structure to follow. Now, morethan ever the industry must champion the Tiered Preparedness and Response Model (IPIECA, 2007),
which identifies the drivers for building response capacity based upon operational factors, location /setting factors, legislative requirements and the availability of resources already in place. Thismethodology encourages a risk-based approach of which OSRL forms a central part, as one of a small
group of industry-owned Tier 3 response providers. The key is to provide a seamless escalation ofresponse capability where the local Tier 1 can be supplemented by a regional Tier 2 capability whichin turn can be supplemented by established Tier 3 resources such as OSRL. “Seamlessly” is the key
word and OSRL is currently developing relationships and MoUs with independent and commercialTier 2 organisations to ensure a smooth escalation and transition of response capability for major
incidents.
Combating resources – When people think of response resources there is a natural tendency tofocus on oil spill equipment hardware as a shiny, tangible, physical demonstration of investment inresponse capability. In reality equipment provision is only a part of the solution which counts fornothing without the investment in trained people and management systems to bring about effective
response. It must also be recognised that equipment is not just a one-off capital purchase to plug anidentified gap, but is viewed as an ongoing commitment to provide equipment (and spares)
appropriate to the risk, that can be moved easily and deployed by trained and available people.
Equipment will need to used in training exercise and will therefore require replacing periodically aswear and tear takes its inevitable toll which should be factored into an ongoing operational budget.
Training – Remains a critical factor in response success, not just in equipment deployment but also
in respect of the management issues that a spill presents. Oil handling facilities, and otheroperations involved in operations that may have a spill risk need to undertake a training-needs
analysis to identify the demands for operational and management training. Some countries haveestablished their own legislative requirements for oil spill training under the auspices of the OPRC
Convention whilst elsewhere the IMO model training course provide a useful benchmark ofestablished international training standards. As with maintaining equipment, training should beviewed as an ongoing commitment to sustain the response capability. As with any discipline which isa not a regular part of the day-job there will be a need for ongoing refresher training as well as arecognition that people regularly change job-roles or otherwise move on and are replaced, diluting
the impact of previously held competence over time.
Exercises – When plans are in place and training has been conducted it becomes necessary to test
the response arrangements though an exercise. There are different models of exercises which canbe adapted to any given scenario depending on the objectives of the exercise, but a typical approachis to start small and prove the basic elements of the response (e.g. equipment deployment,notifications as per the contingency plan etc) before moving onto more ambitious exercises
involving a wider network of plan stakeholders. A key concept to remember is that an exercise is alearning opportunity with an opportunity to influence or otherwise enhance the plan based upon
actual use of the plan in exercise conditions. There is danger in using an exercise as a demonstration
to “show off” response capability in a highly scripted running order as this may lead to a false senseof security and misplaced trust in the plan.

Implications for OSRL – There is much talk of a new paradigm for oil spill response in the post
Macondo world and indeed, in less than two years since that event began, there has been somesignificant shifts in our organisation, not least in the dramatic growth in the number of our trained
responders. Our involvement in that incident lasted twelve months and highlighted the problems ofmaintaining a sustained in-country presence over such a prolonged period. Whilst the response wasongoing the OSRL Board, quickly recognising the pressures that were building up within theorganisation, approved the immediate recruitment of another 16 responders to our Service Level
Agreement. Further to this, throughout 2011 and into 2012 many additional new recruits haveentered the organisation to service the ever-growing demand for preparedness service to ourmembers in the form of training and consultancy services. Our policy is to grow our response
expertise largely from within, which requires some lead-time to train a raw-recruit into a valuable
response specialist, whether they remain in response operations or pursue a career in preparedness
services.
Our membership has also grown as more and more energy companies, large and small, see thepitfalls of not having access to an adequate Tier 3 response service. Our members, existing and new,are even more sensitised to the issues of spill response and are now predisposed to activate ourservices early (which is a good thing). When they do have an oil spill, even a relatively minor one,their tendency in these is to demand mobilisation of their full entitlement of SLA people andequipment which may turn out to dramatically exceed what the actual situation ultimately requires.
Our members are also being more proactive in their exercise plans and involving us more frequently,and to a greater extent in their notification and incident management exercises (which is anothergood thing).
New areas of the world are opening up for oil exploration and production in South America, Westand East Africa and the former Soviet Union to give just four examples and with this activity we findfurther demands for our preparedness services which is well matched to OSRL’s desire to be closer
to its customers through an expanding network of regional representatives and local offices.
There are also a number of new and significant industry projects which are demanding of ourexpertise and which are of benefit to our organisation. OSRL has become the facilitator of theOSPRAG well-capping device, access to which is now a regulatory requirement for operators who areactive on the UK Continental Shelf and is in discussions regarding the wider industry Subsea Well
Response Project.
The main challenge we face is to grow the organisation quickly and efficiently to meet the evergrowing demands and expectations of our members and the wider network of stakeholders, whilst
not losing focus on the values upon which our reputation has been built – customer focus and abroad range of response services.
In conclusion I would observe that in the post Macondo world there is much focus on change toprevent similar incidents from ever happening again or mitigating the consequences if they do. With
all this focus now rightly devoted to the offshore exploration and production risks we should be
mindful not to be complacent or to overlook the traditional shipping source risks, which although
now much reduced, have not been completely eliminated. Whilst humans still control ships at sea
accidents can still happen as we saw dramatically illustrated with the Costa Concordia incident inItaly only a few weeks ago. We must therefore remain vigilant and prepared with proven and tested
plans in place, ready to respond whenever the worst happens.