USCG Recognizes T&T Marine Salvage’s Capabilities

T&T Marine Salvage, a member company of the Teichman Group, founded in 1957, received a new certification by the U.S. Coast Guard to detect and recover non-floating oils. T&T is the first Coast Guard recognized Salvage and Marine Firefighting service provider to receive this new Oil Spill Removal Organization classification initiated by the U.S. Coast Guard in 2016.

This new certification is in recognition of T&T’s years of experience conducting non-floating oil detection and recovery operations and their expansive inventory of hydrographic, diving, ROV, and submersible pumping equipment positioned around the U.S. and its territories.  Additionally, T&T maintains purpose-built hydrographic survey vessels used during the Deepwater Horizon incident and other projects involving non-floating oils.

This Coast Guard recognition comes just months after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration listed the agency’s top three FY16 response operations, all involving T&T personnel and equipment.  Two of these high-profile response operations highlighted T&T’s capabilities to conduct oil removal operations below the surface.

In late 2015, the U.S. Coast Guard contracted T&T to conduct an underwater assessment and recover a highly toxic benzene cargo from the tank barge ARGO in Lake Erie that sank in 1937. This project required divers to work in zero-visibility and, after conducting a comprehensive non-destructive testing survey, install hydraulic submersible pumps on the hull at eight locations to safely pump the cargo to a barge that had been specially constructed by T&T with an inert gas system and vapor recovery control systems to minimize any environmental impacts.  In September 2015, following a barge collision on the Mississippi River, T&T was contracted to recover a heavy slurry oil on the bottom of the river. During this operation, T&T again coordinated all recovery assets, including an environmental clamshell and receiving barges. In an assessment of the operation, the Coast Guard Incident Commander stated: “although OSROs are well versed and skilled in on-water oil spill containment and recovery, the designated salvor was better positioned with greater breadth of expertise for allocating resources and implementing/managing tactics for sunken oil recovery.”

“With our years of proven experience managing the removal of oil from sunken ships and recovering non-floating oils, T&T is uniquely qualified to manage these challenging projects,” noted T&T’s Vice President, Jim Elliott.  Based on this experience and expertise, T&T was also selected to help write the 2016 American Petroleum Institute report on detecting and recovering sunken oils that serves as the foundational document for the Coast Guard’s new OSRO classification system.