And ever since, the oil spill response industry worldwide has been troubled by questions of whether they have prepared enough for a spill 5,000 feet under the ocean. Several US task forces and other study panels are preparing reports that are expected to a tough new round of laws governing offshore drilling and oil spill response preparedness. A ripple effect globally is expected and the industry has it eyes wide open that it’s going to be a tougher environment in future. The battle to fix the blown-out well has cost at least USD40 billion so far and stretched over several months until it was declared capped and fully sealed on September 19, 2010. Keeping the oil off the beaches of the Gulf States became top priority for many of the world’s oil spill response companies. BP is setting up a USD20 billion trust fund to guarantee payment of individual damage claims and over 170,000 claims totalling USD1.2 billion have been paid so far by late October. The Gulf of Mexico rig blow-out spilled an estimated 4.9 billion barrels of oil (source, geology.com), but it doesn’t rank as the worst in US history. That title goes to the Lakeview Gusher in 1910-11 when a pressurised well erupted as crews couldn’t store the oil fast enough, spilling an estimated 9 billion barrels on land before it played out naturally a year later. But, in a world of instant headlines and rapidly growing social media, the Deepwater Horizon spill drew more worldwide attention than any spill since the Exxon Valdez disaster in March 1989 (a spill of 10.8 million gallons, that Alaskan disaster is incredibly small by the Gulf of Mexico crisis this year).
First responder
BP called the industry-created non-profit Marine Spill Response Corporation based in Virginia, as its first responder and as the crisis worsened it was aided by the for-profit private sector National Response Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Seacor Holdings Inc. in Ft. Lauderdale Florida. Numerous attempts to have the two agencies spell out their response involvement by World Port Development were unsuccessful. But, the agencies quickly expanded their helpline as did BP. Through a contract arrangement with BP, the world’s largest manufacturer of oil spill response equipment, the Lamor Group, Finland, was called in and within 36 hours had six experts on site involved in decontamination and decommissioning. At its peak, Lamor assembled 20 engineers in the gulf and shipped over 300 kilometers of boom, 600 skimmer systems, 50 offloading systems and countless tanks and other ancillary equipment to dozens of customers along the entire Gulf Coast. “We were working at full capacity, increasing production and shifts,” says Andrew Crawford, Senior Vice President, Global Business for Lamor and based in the Isle of Wight. “Our commitment is to be ready anytime anywhere and thanks to us being a global company with production set up through a network or subcontractors managed by our production teams we were able to react very quickly and manufacture a large amount of equipment at various sites in a very short time.”
Other spills
And it was a taxing time as there were three other oil spills on Lamor’s plate – in Singapore, China and in Lake Michigan in the Great Lakes – that were responded to with equipment and personnel. Just before the BP well blow out, Lamor deployed equipment and teams to the site of an airliner crash in Estonia after an Antonov 26 cargo plane made an emergency landing on Lake Ulemiste near Tallinn. The frozen solid lake was the principal drinking reservoir for the city and Lamor had the task of cleaning up oil and other chemicals that had leaked below the ice from the fuselage. It was a time of sacrifice as Lamor staff responded to the emergencies around the world, says Crawford. “They gave up vacations, weekends and so on to make this happen.” From August until November 2009, Lamor equipment was used in another major oil well blow out, this time in the Timor Sea. The West Atlas oil spill was Australia’s largest and according to Crawford, “one of the worst environmental disasters the country has seen.”
Alaskan help
Alaska Clean Seas out of Anchorage was also heavily deployed in the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and had supervisory teams in at least three different areas of the gulf. “They had lots of labourers but needed organised teams,” says Alaska Clean Seas General Manager, Ron Morris. “Our people were spread out all over creation down there and there were 44 involved at one time or another.” The Alaskan oil spill responder helped assemble a fleet of response vessels using operating shrimp and oyster boats outfitted with boom arms and brush skimmers with polytanks on deck to gather oil – up to 40 barrels in three hours at one stage in near shore activities near the Chandeleur Islands off Louisiana. Despite the massive amount of oil spilled by the well blow out, Morris says the impact on gulf beaches was “not that bad” because of the oil interception at the source of the sunken rig. Alaska Clean Seas has a mandate to provide effective response services for the Alaska North Slope crude oil producers and the first 167 miles of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System – a jurisdiction that covers both land and water. Morris says no one in the industry anticipated a spill as big as Deepwater Horizon and it was the first time Alaska Clean Seas had been called on oil spill response outside its own territory. “It was quite an investment in time, but our employees were enthusiastic to help.” As well as personnel, the responder sent 82,000 feet of boom and two skimmers that were surplus to its own readiness needs. Over 25,200 personnel were still involved in the response effort late in October as BP and MSRC and others continued the cleanup with 670,000 feet of containment booms still deployed. At its peak oil spill responders used up to 3.5 million feet of boom.
Tougher laws
Morris expects the US to come up with tougher new laws governing well safety and blow out issues. “Individually, responders anticipate a new number for worse case scenarios and plans for response. Currently that figure is 5,500 barrels per day in Alaska.” Alaska Clean Seas has already increased it equipment inventory in 2010 to meet contingency plan requirements of expanding oil company members. Another among the response teams was the Western Canada Marine Response Corporation (WCMRC), which had a minimum of about 14 personnel on hand helping out during the height of the oil spill crisis. For all responders, the Gulf of Mexico spill was “one you can learn from,” says Bruce Turnbull, Business Support Manager for the Western Canadian response corporation and he expects a “spate of legislative improvements” to follow. At home on the west coast, Turnbull says there have been only small quite localised spill responses to deal with in 2010 with some product transfer booming, a tug rollover and a forklift plunge in a dock collapse, but neither had product spills. Thanks to a 10-year capital plan, WCMRC’s inventory is continuing to climb. Just in case it had its own crisis during the Gulf spill, which was keeping oil spill responder equipment manufacturers busy, the Canadian agency also stocked up on such things as absorbents, “we didn’t want to be caught short.”
More inquiries
Readiness is obviously on a lot of minds thanks to the Deep Horizon well blow out and massive spill. Lamor Group’s Crawford says the global company has noticed “a much higher level of inquiries and requests from the market than normal due to the highly-publicised news coverage of the Gulf of Mexico incident. “Public and government awareness and concern about oil spills was reignited by the Gulf incident and that certainly made it clear that corporations are taking some risks due to shrinking oil reserves, rising oil prices and offshore oil deposit discoveries in deep waters,” says Crawford.” However, the primary source of accidental oil spills into seas these days is still associated with transportation by tankers and pipelines, and incidents have been in decline over
the past 30 years. Under the International Maritime Organisation banner, Crawford says the global community has “done a huge amount to improve the situation” with the introduction of the OPRC Convention, the Bunker Convention, and more recently the HNS Protocol, “but progress has been slow, especially in the developing countries where oil exploration and production is most active.” As a global responder, Crawford says Lamor is supporting these organisations with the best solutions, available at short notice, and backed up with teams of professionals available worldwide.