Page 37: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (April 1992)

MARINE SPILL RESPONSE

CORPORATION

The World's Largest Oil Spill Response Organization

On March 24,1989, an oil tanker struck a reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound, causing the biggest oil spill in the history of the United

States. While thousands worked to clean up the spill, a small task force, organized under the auspices of the

American Petroleum Institute, be- gan taking a hard look at the exist- ing resources for responding to cata- strophic oil spills. In June of 1989, the task force reported its sobering conclusion: the capability did not exist either in industry or govern- ment, to deal with tanker spills of the magnitude of the one in Alaska.

As a result of task force recom- mendations, 20 oil companies began the process of creating the Petro- leum Industry Response Organiza- tion (PIRO) to manage catastrophic spills. In August 1990, the oil com- panies created two new organiza- tions: The Marine Spill Response

Corporation (MSRC) and the Ma- rine Preservation Association (MPA). MSRC, which succeeds PIRO, is an independent oil spill response organization. It will operate out of five regional response centers, each supported by several strategically placed equipment sites. MPA, an organization including oil compa- nies and shippers and receivers of oil, will fund MSRC but will have no control over operations.

The following are some of the key elements of what is intended to be the largest spill response organiza- tion in the world.

Geographic Coverage

MSRC will have its headquarters in Washington, D.C., and will have five regional response centers in the

New York-New Jersey metropolitan area; Miami, Florida; Lake Charles,

Louisiana, near the Texas border;

Port Hueneme, California, north of

Los Angeles; and the Seattle, Wash- ington area. Each region will have three to six prestaging areas (more than 20 for all five regions) where equipment and sometimes vessels and personnel will be located. The proposed regional centers and prestaging area sites have been iden- tified based upon a number of fac- tors: proximity to the sea, air and highway transport and the poten- tial for response based on oil trans- portation patterns.

Spill Response And Cleanup

MSRC is intended to provide a best-effort response to major spills (the size of the Alaska spill) of per- sistent oil (i.e., oils that do not evapo- rate or degrade quickly) in the U.S. coastal and tidal waters (out to the limits of the U.S. Exclusive Eco- nomic Zone (EEZ) that are beyond the capacity of local response orga- nizations. Each of the five regional centers will have a variety of re- sources: response vessels, various types of booms and skimmers, a dis- persant capability, information sys- tems, etc. and highly trained per- sonnel. MSRC regions will also em- ploy subcontractors to provide a va- riety of capabilities. Neighboring regional MSRC assets may also be used during major releases. MSRC will not deal in small spills unless the spill is beyond the capability of local spill response resources. Un- der MSRC's charter, the decision whether the spill exceeds local re- sponse capabilities is to be made by the Coast Guard.

Relation To MPA

MPA members pay annual dues, based on the number of barrels of oil they transported in the area cov- ered by MSRC in the previous year.

MPA is providing grants of funds to

MSRC and these will be used to pay

MSRC operating, capital, and re- search and development costs. If an

MPA member should become a spiller, MSRC will be available to aid the spiller consistent with the spiller's contract with MSRC. The spiller—not MSRC or the other members of MPA—will pay for the actual cleanup.

Relation To Coast Guard

MSRC's charter requires that it operate under the direction of the

U.S. Coast Guard, which has a pres- ence around the nation's coasts and an effective military command con- trol and communications structure.

Coast Guard "direction" will not re- lieve oil spillers of their responsibil- ity to pay for response and cleanup costs. The Coast Guard (the federal on-scene coordinator in coastal and tidal waters) must, however, pro- vide direction and coordination of all federal, state and private cleanup operations when the discharge poses a substantial threat to the public health or welfare. In the event of a spill, Coast Guard supervision is intended to cut through interagency red tape to eliminate delays during the crucial early hours.

Relation To Local

Response Organizations

MSRC is not intended to replace existing oil spill cooperatives and independent response contractors.

These entities have done a good job handling smaller spills. MSRC will respond when this infrastructure does not have sufficient resources to respond to a large spill. MSRC will work with co-ops and independent responders with whom it has agree- ments, training and drilling with them.

Liability Of The Responder

Under federal law, the responder to an oil spill has limited immunity.

He is not liable for damages or re- moval costs when he acts in accor- dance with the National Contin- gency Plan or as otherwise directed by the President, unless his acts are grossly negligent or constitute will- ful misconduct. This immunity does not apply to cases of wrongful death or personal injury. Under some state laws, however, responders may not be provided with this explicit immu- nity. Since federal authority may not preempt state law in this re- gard, MSRC is seeking state liabil- ity standards that are at least as protective as the federal standard.

This standard is appropriate because an oil spill responder must act deci- sively, in a dynamic emergency en- vironment over which he has very limited control. Moreover, he must frequently act with less than perfect information and act in the face of alternatives—each of which can be expected to cause some damage.

Most coastal states have adopted, or are in the process of adopting, the federal immunity standard.

Research And Development

MSRC will administer a large re- search and development program to improve the knowledge and tech- nology used to respond to and clean up spills. This program will comple- ment other programs in government, academia and industry. MSRC stud- ies will include those onremote sens- ing to support operations during lim- ited visibility including night, pre- venting loss of oil from ships, oil on- water recovery, treatment and han- dling of recovered oily materials, preventing and mitigating shoreline impacts, fate and effects of spilled crude oil and products, mitigating impact on wildlife, and health and safety.

Readiness

MSRC will develop programs for evaluating the performance of itself and its subcontractors. MSRC will perform operational evaluations to ascertain its level of readiness. An- nounced and unannounced exercises and drills will be part of this pro- gram.

Cost

MSRC's five-year costs for opera- tions, capital equipment and re- search and development are esti- mated at more than $900 million.

Remaining

Implementation Tasks

A detailed implementation plan has been developed and is being car- ried out, but much still remains to be executed. Additional personnel— including subcontractors, who will actually do much of the work of trans- porting equipment to spill sites and operating it — still must be hired and trained. Each region is being sur- veyed to ensure that specific sites meeting MSRC operational require- ments actually are available. Land and buildings are being purchased or leased for the regional centers and warehouses. Insurance is being pro- cured. The research and readiness programs are now starting to be launched.

Implementation Dates

MSRC is working hard to be fully operational by February 1993, when the Oil Pollution Act of1990 requires new response plans to be submitted.

This Act requires shippers and oth- ers responsible for oil transporta- tion, production and storage to show that they have access to private per- sonnel and equipment necessary to remove, to the maximum extent prac- tical, a worst-case oil spill they might cause. Many may want to rely on

MSRC to satisfy important elements of those federal requirements rather than obtain other cleanup capabil- ity. Only members of MPA may cite

MSRC in their spill response plans.

For more information contact:

J?- Marine Spill Response Corporation /VUiKL. 1350 I Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005

April, 1992 35