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spill response


Marine scientists urge spill response reassessment


On the second anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon incident, a panel of researchers in the US is urging the federal government to reassess how it would respond to similar oil spills that might occur in the future


that the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill was unlike any other. Although the blowout occurred at unprecedented depths and released enormous quantities of oil (an estimated 4.9 million barrels or 206 million gallons), the response to cleaning up and containing the oil followed a framework that assumed the oil’s behaviour would mimic previous shallow-water and surface spills. In addition to creating a new model for understanding how deepwater oil spills occur, the authors argue for an increase in immediately accessible research funding following oil spills so that society can be better prepared to respond to future spills, should they occur. They also noted that the requirement of the federal Natural Resource Damage Assessment Process that requires co-operative decision-making between the government and the responsible party and mutual approvals of research studies slows down the process and limits the scope of studies that are conducted. “So many aspects of this oil spill were unique: that it was an offshore and a deepwater blowout; that both methane and oil were released from the wellhead into the ocean; that dispersants were used at both the sea surface and sea floor,” said University of Georgia marine scientist Samantha Joye. “Doing science in response to the spill was an incredible challenge, and what we learned during the response led us all to the new spill response model that is described in our paper.”


A


panel of 22 researchers in the US, whose paper was published April 20 in the peer-reviewed journal Bioscience, noted


The response to the Deepwater Horizon spill saw dispersants injected into the water column, not just used on the surface


for


The authors noted that the lack of a model understanding


deepwater spills may


have hindered initial work on this disaster and obscured understanding of what actually happened in the key early days.


“The problem here is that scientific assessment would be faster and more thorough if this were a familiar type of spill,” said the study’s lead author, Charles Peterson, a professor at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who has been deeply involved in the study of Exxon Valdez environmental effects for more than two decades. “But this was a new type of spill. We now have a sense that the bulk of the impact was probably in the mid-water and deep ocean. Who knows what oil does to the mid-water pelagic and deep-dwelling organisms?” To create their new model, a group of


scientists convened in 2010 under the auspices of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, while the spill was still active,


to synthesise existing knowledge to anticipate the potential ecotoxicological effects of the spill. They highlighted major gaps in scientific understanding that must be addressed for society to successfully confront the modern oil spill in an age in which drilling has moved into deeper water. “All our previous oil-spill models were focused on the skin and the edge of the ocean. That was where everyone thought the action was, like it was for the Exxon Valdez,” said co-author Sean Anderson, an associate professor at California State University Channel Islands. “As the Deepwater Horizon spill unfolded, you would hear folks saying things like ‘we all know what happens when oil and water mix, the oil floats’. That wasn’t the whole story. And that oversimplification initially sent us down an incorrect path full of assumptions and actions that were not the best possible use of our time and effort.” The new model for how an oil spill unfolds


DNV acquires oil-spill preparedness company Classification society DNV has acquired


Norwegian Petro Services (NPS), a company that specialises in oil-spill preparedness. Knut


Ørbeck-Nilssen, DNV’s chief operations officer for its Norwegian, Russian www.osjonline.com


and Finnish division, said DNV wanted to be able to provide the oil and gas industry with greater expertise on managing oil spills in the Arctic.


“We are combining DNV’s environmental


risk and oil-spill preparedness analyses with NPS’s specialist expertise in planning and organising oil-spill preparedness. This provides a complete service portfolio to our customers,” said Mr Ørbeck-Nilssen.


Offshore Support Journal I June 2012 I 57


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