Petroleum Association of Japan
February 2008
Industry resources for responding to oil spills ~ What determines theireffectiveness?
Mr Paolo Linzi
Chairman&
Mr David salt
Operations Director
Oil Spill Response & East Asia Response Limited

This paper will be delivered in two sections, initially looking at the industry capability for
responding to oil spills around the globe and secondly, identifying the barriers and obstacles
to the effective use of these resources and what may be done to overcome them.
Industry resources for responding to oil spills
For many years the oil industry has recognised the need to provide an effective response tooil spills. Since the first major accident involving the Torrey Canyon in 1967, where theresponse was ad-hoc to say the least, there has been a tremendous investment to improve
response capabilities worldwide. One of the industry’s key drivers in the quest for effective
response has been an attempt to deliver a ‘risk based’ solution. To achieve this, the tiered
response concept was evolved. The tiered response philosophy recognised the reality that, inthe main, the vast proportion of oil spills are small operational events that might be more
frequent in their occurrence, but are generally limited in their impact and can be dealt with by
the industry with little intervention from the National Authorities. These spills are categorized
as Tier 1 events. As the severity of a spill increases, either by virtue of its size or its location,
the National government takes an increasing role in its management. This is generally as aconsequence of the increasing impact, both environmentally and politically. In the event of an
emergency the public rightly look to their leaders to demonstrate control over events and haveexpectations that this will be the case. A spill that meets the criteria described above i.e. onethat is beyond the control of the local resources and requires the intervention of the National
Authorities is categorized as a Tier 2 event. The last case, and the most serious, but thankfully
the most infrequent, is the Tier 3 incident. This type of event requires international or external
resources to be brought to bear as the incident is so serious that it can not be dealt with by the
National Authorities alone. The Tiered response concept is very simple in theory but can bedifficult to interpret and implement in practice as the range of resources available at each of
the Tier levels varies greatly. The Tier 1 levels are set by the nature of the operations and therisk they present. The resources available at Tier 2 from a national authority may range frombeing completely comprehensive to being completely absent. The difficulty in providing backup resources is also a factor in the planning as if there are difficult logistical challenges toovercome through either transport, distance or bureaucratic requirements, the local resource
levels may need to be increased to compensate. The concept does rely on every stakeholder
properly playing their part to achieve an effective response and equally importantly

Petroleum Association of Japan
February 2008
integrating with all of the tiers to provide a seamless effective response. It is at theseinterfaces that the problems generally occur. The Tiered Response and Preparedness paper
produced by the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association(IPIECA), has recently been updated and documents the concept in much greater detail andclarity for the stakeholders. The documents is currently only available in English but can be
downloaded from the IPIECA website at www.ipieca.org/publications .
Depending on where we are in the world, the degree of ability to provide management,
trained personnel and equipment resources varies greatly. In highly developed places such as
Japan, for example, there is a comprehensive and sophisticated array of resources available, inmany other places this is not the case. Many National administrations do not have the luxury
of funding to equip national stockpiles of equipment, but regardless of this there is still a need

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for them to be involved in the management of a response as it is their responsibility. The
International Maritime Organisation’s International Convention on Oil Pollution Preparedness,

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Response Convention and Cooperation , 1990 (OPRC convention) recognises this, and one of
the six elements of response, probably the most important one, is to designate a lead orcompetent authority within the Government structure to take the management lead.
Signatories to the OPRC convention are also expected to have a notification system to adviseof oil spills, a national contingency plan, a training and exercise regime to test preparedness,
access to equipment resources and transboundary arrangements to facilitate easy movement of
resources. These are the fundamental building blocks of an effective response capability.
In the 1980’s the oil industry recognised that there was a need for an integrated response
structure to respond to the high number of incidents that were occurring worldwide. There
was no desire to establish huge response facilities in every country in which the oil industry
operated, on the basis that the ongoing funding of the care and maintenance of equipment, andthe training of personnel in its use is difficult to sustain. This has been demonstrated to be thecase over the years. As a consequence the industry established a number of response centres,
including Clean Caribbean Corporation (CCC) in the United States, the Tiered Area Response
Capability (TARC) in Singapore and Oil Spill Response Limited (OSRL) in Southampton. By
the 1990’s, following a spate of severe incidents, including the Exxon Valdez, which had an
impact well beyond its actual severity in terms of its volume, the demand for increased
response capability was growing. Response centres were established by the industry in the
United States as a response to the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, an Act passed by US Congress
requiring a huge increase in planning and response resources, these being provided by Marine
Spill Response Corporation (MSRC) through five bases. In Australia, the Australian Marine
Oil Spill Centre (AMOSC) was inaugurated with a responsibility for national response andsupport to the South Pacific islands. In Singapore, East Asia Response Limited wasestablished to enhance the response capability in the region and, following the Nagasaki Spirit,

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Petroleum Association of Japan
February 2008
Sanko Honour and Maersk Navigator incidents in the Malacca Strait, the Petroleum
Association of Japan ( PAJ) established its network of response centres in domestic Japan andalong the main tanker trades routes from the Middle East.
Over recent years, as a consequence of improved shipping quality, better management
scrutiny, stricter legislation, ship vetting and a variety of other measures, there has been amarked reduction in the number of spills occurring from the tanker sector of the industry.
This has led to a number of consequences. Many of the small response organisations,

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particularly those established in the United States in the early 1990’s, have left the businessand globally there has been a consolidation of the response resources. MSRC have integrated
some of the response co-operatives in the US and changed their base arrangements and also
OSRL and EARL have merged to become one company (OSRL EARL). The drop in spill

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incidents has also led to a reduction in the number of opportunities for responders to attend
spills, clearly a benefit to the environment, but one that has an impact on those in the spill
response industry to maintain and enhance their competence. To counter this, and to try andleverage the huge investment made by industry across the globe, OSRLEARL and MSRC
established a group called the Global Response Network (GRN). This group is formed from

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the industry funded response organisations and works to share resources and response
knowledge among its members. It also has the ability to share personnel at no cost, to givemembers the opportunity to attend spills and gain experience, either general or very specific.
For example, Alaska Clean Seas, a member of the GRN provided an opportunity for OSRLEARL staff to gain direct cold weather response experience during an incident they responded
to on the North slope in Alaska during winter, an invaluable opportunity. These organisations,and others, also participate in the Industry Technical Advisory Committee, a technical group

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drawn from the response community worldwide. In the group technical issues, informationand spill experiences are shared and discussed within the community. Information on thegroup can be found at www.industry-tac.org. As can be seen, the oil industry globally has
contributed hugely to preventing incidents and improving response to oil spills, and in the oil
sector there is a marked improvement in the overall performance. Across the entire marine
sector, a pattern seems to be emerging of an increase in weather related incidents that isleading to an increase in casualties and spills, so whilst the tanker sector continues to improve
there is still a background of spill events that needs to be countered.
Response effectivenessTo make resources available is one part of the issue, to be able to use them effectively issomething else entirely. The history of oil spills is littered with examples of difficulties inproviding an effective response capability. The six key issues that surround this could besummarised to being able to:1. Have the ability to call upon resources (access)削除:
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February 2008
2. Have the will to do so
3. Have a clear understanding of what is needed
4. Have the ability to deploy the resources
5. Have the ability to manage the resources
6. Have the ability to be able to say no to assistance if it is not required

1. Access to resources
The OPRC convention, as stated, requires that resources be available to respond to oil spills.
These can be provided in many different ways, through National Government, commercial
providers and also from the Tier 3 response providers including organisations such as the
PAJ and OSRL EARL. Clearly from the point of view of effective response it is a question ofgetting the right resources in the right place at the right time. As a result, the origin of theequipment may vary in order that the best response time can be achieved. The agency thatrequests the resources might vary and may be the shipowner, cargo owner, insurer, insurer’s
technical advisers or Government. It can be seen there is no shortage of people able to callfor these resources; the important part is for it to happen in a timely manner and for theappropriate resources to be requested.

2. The will to mobilise resources
Given the vast amount of resources places at great expense around the world, what inhibits
their use? Oil spills are curious phenomena. The spiller sometimes fails to report the incident,
or if they do, the amount reported might not be accurately transmitted, either throughaccident or design, so in some cases the actual requirement is unclear. The call for resources
to respond does need be controlled however, there is no point deploying resources thatcannot be effectively used or managed. There is a need for skilled and experienced technicaladvisors, who understand what happens to the oil, what the impacts might be and whatstrategies can be used to combat it. The ‘knee jerk’ reaction should be avoided. But
experienced observers do exist and they can be quickly deployed to site to assess the likely
consequences of a spill and make recommendations. This advice should be heeded and acted
upon immediately. The time aspect is critically important, particularly in respect of adispersant response, as any delay will reduce the effectiveness due to the weathering andspread of the oil. In the experience of OSRL EARL, there have been occasions where thedecision to mobilise has been delayed due to political or financial concerns and in one
incident recently a delay of 10 days in mobilising a response meant that the effectiveness of
the response was reduced to virtually zero and became a pure political expediency. This is
not a good use of response resources. This is another curious aspect of oil spills, they quickly
change from being a technical discussion to a highly emotive political event and in some

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Petroleum Association of Japan
February 2008
cases there is a reluctance to call for support as it represents a perceived failure on behalf of
those requesting the help, when in reality, the very reverse is true. It is fair to say that there
are very few plaudits for anyone involved in an oil spill, and the best one can ever hope for isto minimise the amount of negative criticism that is received in the final analysis. To
positively deny the opportunity to use existing resources that might be of value could not be
deemed a positive contribution however. There is often a tendency to believe that ‘things will
get better’ over a period of time, in the hope that they will. Invariably this proves not to be
the case and they get worse.

3. Knowing what is needed
Deciding which resources are necessary is another important point. All oils are different
and will behave in different ways in specific environments, and each will require an
appropriate set of strategies. The strategy choices are based on oil type, volume spilled local
environment, weather, oil movement, logistics support and the local resources and manpower
available. There can be a tendency to ‘call for everything’ but in reality only a small
proportion of equipment might ever be used. This again is often driven out of the politicalimperative to be seen to be in control of events, for that read ‘be seen to be mobilising
everything, even if we don’t need it’, this again is a fallacy as it may lead to resources thatare of value being withheld or delayed. Deciding on the response strategy and what isrequired should be done in consultation with those experienced in response to ensure that theright resources are mobilised.

4. Deploying the resources
It is pointless to request resources that can not be deployed, either because they are notsuited to the spilled oil type, do not have the correct logistics support or do not have the staff
trained to operate them or sufficient personnel to conduct the planned operations. These
aspects must be understood when requesting the assistance, and again experienced
responders can be used to assist in this vital decision making process. There must be a planon how the resources are to be put in effective use.

5. Ability to manage the resources
Once the equipment and personnel are deployed to site there is a need to be able to manage
them effectively. Often in the early stages of spill there is a tendency to flood the responsewith resources. To establish an effective management system with a collection of people thatmaybe have never met before, have differing objectives and priorities, based on scant
information in a new location is never going to be easy and will take a time to settle down.

Petroleum Association of Japan
February 2008
Again the ‘knee jerk’ reaction is not helpful and the response should be gradually ramped up
as the management ability to engage the resources effectively increases.

6. Have the ability and courage to say no
As in all of life and business experiences, there are times to say ‘yes’ to things and equally
there are times to say ‘no’. As can be seen in some of the previous examples, if support isgenuinely not needed, and will not assist, but is being imposed out misplaced desire to help
or political expediency it is important to say no. To do otherwise will compromise theeffectiveness of the response.

Conclusion
In summary it is clear that there are large amounts of resources available to respond to oil
spills either from the oil industry, Government and commercial providers. There is also,
through the OPRC convention, a framework that can enable these resources to be used in an
effective manner should the need arise. The principle behind the response has to be getting
the ‘right resources into the right place at the right time and being able to manage thoseresources effectively once they are on site’. The Contingency Plan is the mechanism formaking this happen and it is important that this is exercised and tested on a periodic basis toensure that all of the players are familiar with what is required of them in the event of anincident. Equally the technical advice that can be provided from those experienced in dealing
with oil spills should not be ignored or abandoned to political expediency. Time is at apremium in any spill situation and should not be wasted.

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