The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has issued draft guidelines on Arctic marine mammal disasters under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. These guidelines will update the Marine Mammal Oil Spill Response Guidelines of 2006. Comments must be submitted on or before March 13, 2017. Oil spill responses in ... Read More
New Coast Guard APC Rule Adds Admin Burden
The United States Coast Guard is revamping the Alternative Planning Criteria National Guidelines and has extended the public comment period to April 10, 2017. The draft changes seek to clarify alternative planning criteria (APC) submissions and processes pursuant to 33 CFR 155.1065 and 155.5067, which deal with oil or ... Read More
Careful With Peer-to-Peer Yacht Sharing
Owning a yacht may be for the well-to-do, but idle assets are often a loss owners wish to avoid. Owners of luxury boats—just as those of high-value homes—have increasingly been turning to the sharing economy, or peer-to-peer rentals. Online services that cater to high-value boat leases make it easy ... Read More
A Spill-Response Aerial Imagery Plan Is a Priority
Responding to an at-sea oil spill requires multiple efforts, some that occur simultaneously and some that are deployed over a linear time frame. Knowing what your goals are is the first challenge. Finding and accumulating the right data to define that and establish finite, clear benchmarks is much easier ... Read More
Don’t Let Complexities Stifle Aerial Data Collection
An effective response to an at-sea oil spill requires quality aerial data collection and analysis. That may include equipment you don’t have and visual data your employees don’t comprehend. Even choosing when and where to send collection assets can be confusing. But don’t let the complexities of aerial data ... Read More
Assessing a Tainted Shoreline
In major marine oil spills and spills that occur close to land, the at-sea response rarely prevents coastal resources from being contaminated. Owners/Operators need to integrate a sure response into all their spill-response plans. But how can a company do that when each spill is different, based on the ... Read More
At-Sea Spills: A Shoreline Response
A marine oil spill requires immediate action based on a contingency plan that has been tested through simulation. The priority goals are to contain and recover what oil you can and to assist natural processes to disperse or biodegrade what oil you cannot recover. In major oil spills, the ... Read More
At-Sea Spills: Importance of Contingency Planning
Significant oil spills can remain in the press and the social consciousness for years or even decades. The damage done by major events like the Exxon Valdez spill and the Deepwater Horizon well blowout increase and reinforce to Owners and Operators that in the event of a spill they ... Read More