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Oil Spill Responses News

14 Nov 2018

Oil Removed from WWII Era Shipwreck

(U.S. Navy photo by LeighAhn Ferrari)

A U.S. Navy led team has removed 229,000 gallons of oil from a sunken World War II era German heavy cruiser that has been resting on the seafloor near the Marshall Islands for more than 70 years.After being transferred to the U.S. as a war prize, the cruiser Prinz Eugen was loaded with oil and cargo and used to assess survivability of warships during the Operation Crossroads atomic bomb tests in the Pacific. The ship survived two atomic blasts before being towed to Kwajalein Atoll…

01 Aug 2017

Salvage and Marine Firefighting

© Lev Savitskiy / Adobe Stock

Salvage and marine firefighting are complex response efforts often undertaken in adverse weather and sea conditions. While no two oil spill responses are the same, the diversity of variation between any two oil spill responses is not near as great as the diversity of any two salvage and marine firefighting responses. As a result, salvage and marine firefighting response providers must plan for and anticipate a wide range of variation in what will be required to address their portion of a marine casualty. The U.S.

29 Jan 2016

Alaska Oil Spill Response Policy Revised

The policy regarding chemical dispersant use for oil spill responses in Alaska has been revised. The new policy for the Dispersant Use Plan For Alaska was announced Wednesday in Anchorage by the U.S. Coast Guard in coordination with four other signatory agencies of the Alaska Regional Response Team (ARRT). According to the Coast Guard, the new policy aims to be more inclusive, comprehensive and conservative and includes a preauthorization area with a more protective protocol for use of chemical dispersant during responses to spills of crude oil in certain waters offshore of Alaska. The policy allows for case-by-case decision-making criteria…

08 Apr 2015

Marine Salvage & Oil Spill Response Insights

Photo: Global Diving & Salvage

Last month Maritime Reporter had the good fortune to receive insights from a trio of maritime salvage leaders – Paul Hankins, Tim Beaver & Jim Elliott – garnering insights on one of the most challenging and ever-changing sectors of the maritime market. It was recently written “salvors have become more closely tied to Oil Spill Response Organizations (OSROs).” Why? Hankins The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA90) defines how all stakeholders will respond to potential or actual oil spill responses.

19 Dec 2014

Interview: Oil Spill Repsonse Insights from MSRC's Benze: Steven T. Benz, President and CEO, Marine Spill Response Corporation (MSRC)

Steve Benz, president and CEO, MSRC

As President and CEO of MSRC, Steve Benz presides over the largest oil spill response company in the United States (and worldwide). In that position since January 1996, he has during that tenure, overseen several critical phases in the Company’s evolution. These include a major restructuring in the late 1990s to make it more competitive; growth throughout the 2000-2009 period, including acquisition of several companies; leadership in overseeing MSRC’s role in responding to the 2010 BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico…

19 May 2014

Interview: Rich Hobbie, Water Quality Insurance Syndicate (WQIS)

 Rich Hobbie

An interview with Rich Hobbie, the leader of the Water Quality Insurance Syndicate (WQIS), the largest underwriter of pollution liability insurance for marine vessels in the United States. Can you give our readers an overview of your business today. The Premium income and growth factors in the marine insurance industry are very stagnant right now. And competition is quite heavy in all areas. In the U.S. market and in the marine market in general, there are new players. The London market has gotten more aggressive over here.

18 Jan 2013

Responder Immunity

Not long after specialized tank ships were developed, enabling the carriage of large quantities of oil and petroleum products, groundings, collisions, and other casualties started causing significant oil spills. In those early days, there was no financial incentive to clean up such spills. To the extent that there was a response, it was often by Good Samaritans, a term derived from a parable found in the Bible at Luke 10:25-37 about a stranger from Samaria who, with no thought of reward, came to the aid of an injured robbery victim in Judah.

20 Apr 2012

Gulf Oil Spill – Conservationists Sue for Dispersant Harm

Conservation groups have sued the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Coast Guard for authorizing toxic oil dispersants without ensuring that these chemicals would not harm endangered species or their habitats. The groups want the EPA to immediately study the effects of dispersants on endangered and threatened species in all U.S. waters, including threatened and endangered whales, sea turtles, salmon and seabirds in the Pacific and polar bears and walruses in the Arctic. “If chemical dispersants are going to be used after an oil spill, we have to know whether they’ll hurt or kill whales, sea turtles and other wildlife.

22 Mar 2010

Coast Guard SONS 2010 National Exercise

The U.S. Coast Guard and 50 other federal, state and private organizations will conduct the triennial Spill of National Significance Exercise or SONS 2010 from March 22-25 in the northeast region of the U.S. SONS 2010 is a full-scale exercise designed to test response to a Spill of National Significance. A SONS is a spill that due to its severity, size, location, complexity or impact requires extraordinary coordination of federal, state, local, and responsible party resources to contain and clean up. As the lead federal agency for pollution incidents in coastal zones, the Coast Guard conducts this type of exercise every three years. Since 1994, exercises have taken place in Pennsylvania., Alaska, Texas, California, and the Midwest.

25 Jun 2008

Coast Guard to Deploy VOSS

The U.S. Coast Guard is exercising their pollution response capabilities by deploying a Vessel of Opportunity Skimming System (VOSS) from the Coast Guard Cutter Katherine Walker, a 175-ft. Keeper class buoy tender home ported in , , in Thursday, June 26, 2008. Media are invited to observe the exercise from aboard the Katherine Walker or the Coast Guard Cutter Sturgeon Bay, a 140-ft. Bay-class ice breaking cutter home ported in Bayonne, N.J., also involved in the exercise. The will host high school students from the Science and Technology Preview summer camp, an environmental education program based in , for the event. After the deployment, the students will meet the cutter Katherine Walker crew in for a tour of the ship and the VOSS equipment.

13 Feb 2007

Coast Guard to Conduct Spill Clean Up Exercise

The U.S. Coast Guard is exercising its pollution response capabilities by deploying a Vessel of Opportunity Skimming System (VOSS) in New York Harbor Thursday, Feb. 15. VOSS is a modular oil recovery system that can be secured to, and operated from, a vessel at a spill site. It is one of 19 systems pre-staged at the Atlantic Strike Team at Fort Dix, N.J., and available for immediate transport anywhere across the country. With this system, a vessel can quickly transform into an oil recovery platform with a maximum skimming capability of 190 gallons per minute. VOSS can be split between two vessels or used as a two-sided sweeping system on a single vessel. The Boston-based First Coast Guard District Response Advisory Team will evaluate the VOSS exercise.