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Oil Spill
Ten things to do to improve oil spill
preparedness Oil spill preparedness within oil companies may have waned during the pandemic. Lucy Short, principal consultant at Oil Spill Response Ltd (OSRL) provides some guidance to help organisations put in place some prevention barriers and readiness actions. S WE START to return to a new normal Lucy Short, principal consultant at OSRL, advises oil companies to assess the level of investment in oil spill preparedness over the last 12 months; the knowledge lost through headcount reductions; and the short-term actions to ensure they remain prepared to respond to an oil spill incident. In a blog, she highlights 10 steps which can help companies to do this: 1. Make sure your Oil Spill Contingency Plan (OSCP) or Oil Spill Response Plan (OSRP) is current, referencing the correct hydrocarbons and risks ratings, and reflecting your company’s latest HSE protocols. Refresh your mind on oil spill response procedures, roles and responsibilities. 2. Review your relevant government guidelines and protocols to check whether anything has changed, which your plan needs to reflect if there is a new protocol or a new level of adherence to a convention required, then you will need to check how this will impact your OSCP/OSRP response model, communication lines and equipment. 3. Check your equipment to see if it looks in good working condition. Note any anomalies and capture them in a central system for further action. Assemble and run the equipment with trained and competent personnel if you can, and assess whether the equipment is commensurate with the risk and suitable to mount a tier 1 response. 4. Restart your team exercises or do an oil spill scenario. Whether your emergency response team is still remote, fully back in the workplace, or half/half, now would be a suitable time to do this. Including an oil spill scenario would be beneficial to test/refresh team knowledge. It would also be good to test the communication lines between those still working from home, those at the facility and those at the exercise site. 5. Review the oil spill response knowledge and competence retained in your Incident Command Team. Speak to everyone about their role in the incident management team
Image Credit : OSRL
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Now is a good time to restart team exercises.
(IMT) and see how competent they feel regarding their knowledge retained. Assess their confidence in their ability to support an oil spill response incident and review their training and exercise records. See what extra training they could do to further their knowledge. If an employee’s accreditation has expired, they will need to attend a refresher course to maintain their accredited training standard. 6. See what free relevant oil spill response courses there are online to refresh your knowledge from companies such as IPIECA, GIWACAF and OSRL. 7. Check out the IPIECA/IMO/IOGP websites for up-to-date knowledge sharing, good practice guides and industry updates. 8. Communicate with the Incident Command/Management Team, Crisis Management Team and the wider business regarding the oil spill response status of your business/operation/facility. Taking the time to share the status of your OSCP/OSRP, the equipment and response techniques with relevant staff ensures that they remember the importance of remaining skilled and knowledgeable on the subject and that they are confident to be part of an oil spill response team.
9. Empower your team to share knowledge and do further (free) training if necessary and available. As part of your incident/emergency command team meetings, have a knowledge sharing session where each team member shares something they have learnt or something that resonates with them about oil spill response. 10. Use an online oil spill response capability review tool. Check out this tool, it is simple to use and freely available to undertake a simple capability review of youroperations: https://www.oilspillresponse .com/tools/ready-check/ n
To view the full article and links to further resources, see https://www.oilspillresponse.com/news-media/blog/how-to-improve-yourpreparedness/ Oil Spill Response Limited (OSRL) is the largest international industry-funded cooperative which exists to respond to oil spills wherever in the world they may occur, by providing preparedness, response and intervention services. https://www.oilspillresponse.com
Issue 4 2021
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