Upcoming NAMEPA Arctic Drilling Preparedness Round Table
With an eye to future resource extraction in Alaskan waters, Clay Maitland, Founding Chairman of the North American Marine Environment Protection Association (NAMEPA), has announced the program for its Environmental Intelligence in Maritime Senior Leadership Roundtable. The Leadership Roundtable will be held in Anchorage, Alaska on August 8th, 2013, at the Captain Cook Hotel. The caucus will begin at 1:30PM with a keynote delivered by Congressman Don Young and will focus on “Drilling Preparedness in the Arctic”. Recent attempts to proceed with drilling in the Arctic have been met with challenges. Federal agencies, as well as private industry, have been working to better understand and meet these challenges.
U.S., Canadian Coast Guard Oil Spill Exercise
Representatives from the U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards, Arctic region stakeholders and established responders are scheduled to hold a joint “Canada - United States North” (CANUSNORTH) tabletop exercise March 16 and 17 at the Captain Cook Hotel in Anchorage. This biennial exercise provides an opportunity for all responders to work together to consult on local issues and improve communications and coordination for potential responses to pollution incidents in the contiguous waters of the Arctic Ocean and Beaufort Sea. Over thirty response organizations and regional stakeholders have been invited to participate. These include the Canadian Coast Guard, Environment Canada, U.S. Seventeenth Coast Guard District, U.S. Coast Guard Sector Anchorage, the U.S.
