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June 2010

Vol. 15, No. 26 Week of June 27, 2010

Report highlights need for response info

Says earlier formation of formal response team would have reduced public concern about Drift River status during Redoubt eruption

Alan Bailey

Petroleum News

When the Redoubt Volcano on the west side of Alaska’s Cook Inlet started erupting in March 2009, the threat of damage to the Drift River Oil Terminal on the Cook Inlet coast at the base of the volcano, and the possibility of an ensuing oil spill from the oil storage tanks at the terminal, became an issue of significant concern to both the oil industry and the general public.

But, although no oil was eventually spilled from the terminal as a result of the eruption, better dissemination of information, especially early on in the Redoubt response, could have avoided some significant public concern about the conduct of the response, according to a retrospective review prepared by Pearson Consulting for Cook Inlet Regional Citizens Advisory Council, the organization that enables citizen oversight of oil spill prevention and response arrangements in the Cook Inlet region.

CIRCAC published Pearson Consulting’s review report on June 21.

Improved defenses

Following an earlier Redoubt eruption in 1989-90, Cook Inlet Pipe Line Co., the Drift River terminal operator, had implemented major modifications at the terminal, including the construction of a huge dike to protect the terminal’s tank farm from flooding from the neighboring Drift River — probably the biggest threat to the terminal comes when the erupting volcano melts ice in the Drift Glacier, the Drift River’s source at the edge of the volcano’s crater, sending a torrent of mud-laden water down the river and out across the low land where the terminal is situated.

Following communication in the late fall and early winter of 2008 from the Alaska Volcano Observatory about potential eruptive activity in volcano, Cook Inlet Pipe Line took immediate action to anticipate the various issues that an eruption would cause, the new report says. Then, in January and February 2009, with increasing indications of the volcano springing into life, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and CIRCAC became involved in working with Cook Inlet Pipe Line to gain a better understanding of how best to respond to an eruption and what the consequences of that eruption might be.

No volumetric data

But, in the first of the communication issues that the report cites, Cook Inlet Pipe Line’s security plan under the Maritime Security Act precluded the company from divulging to the general public the volume of oil being stored in the Drift River tank farm, although the company did provide an indication of how much of the tank storage capacity was being used, the report says.

“The amount of oil stored at the DROT (Drift River Oil Terminal), and which tanks were storing the oil, was a key piece of information in understanding the risk posed by the DROT,” the report says.

In November 2008 Cook Inlet Pipe Line did request a security waiver from the USCG, to release the data, but the USCG eventually denied this request in April 2009, the report says.

By the time that Redoubt started erupting in mid-March, Cook Inlet Pipe Line had already taken actions to secure the terminal and had removed all non-essential personnel from the facility. But only after two large eruptions on March 25 did USCG, ADEC and Cook Inlet Pipe Line decide to establish a formal unified command structure for responding to the eruption — up to that point, the coordination of the response between the various organizations involved had taken place on an informal basis, the report says.

A formal unified command brings an emergency response under the joint management of the major industry and government entities involved in the response.

Better communication

The fact that the unified command did not form until sometime after the eruption started led to communication issues and public misconceptions about what was happening — only after the unified command was put into operation did the communication of information to the public become fully transparent “with the use of a unified command website, posting of daily situation reports, incident action plans, press releases, fact sheets and other public information releases,” the report says.

Following an eruption event on April 4 Cook Inlet Pipe Line shut down the Drift River Oil Terminal indefinitely, evacuating all personnel from the facility on April 6.

A tanker removed 60 percent of the oil in the active terminal tanks in early April, prior to the terminal shutdown. By early August tankers had removed all possible oil from the tanks and Cook Inlet Pipe Line had removed the tanks from service. Shortly thereafter, the Redoubt eruption having subsided, Cook Inlet Pipe Line restarted the terminal, bypassing the tank farm and transferring oil directly from the terminal’s feeder pipeline into oil tankers.

Tank farm protected

In the event, the 2009 Redoubt eruption did cause the Drift River to flood, with major mudflows lapping the top of the new dike that was constructed in the aftermath of the 1989-90 eruption. But although these mudflows encroached into some parts of the terminal, the dikes successfully protected the tank farm, as intended.

However, as lessons learned from the response to the eruption, the CIRCAC-sponsored review report recommends that in the event of a future eruption there needs to be a clear criterion for when a unified command should be formed. A unified command should be established as a matter of course whenever the Alaska Volcano Observatory raises the Redoubt Volcano alert level to yellow, warning of a possible eruption within a few weeks, the report recommends. The report also recommends the establishment of memoranda of understanding between CIRCAC and Cook Inlet oil facility operators, to specify how to make available “need to know information,” such as the volumes of stored oil at facilities. And the report recommends that government agencies prepare “after-action reports” following an incident, to identify what went well and what lessons can be learned.

The report also makes recommendations for improved emergency response guidance for CIRCAC staff and for improved spill response communications within CIRCAC. And CIRCAC needs to review its “power to encourage and motivate action” to make spill response information available to the public, the report says.

CIPC response

Rodney Ficken, vice president of Cook Inlet Pipe Line, in a letter published along with the review report, commented on the overall success of the Drift River Oil Terminal response.

Thanks to improvements made at the terminal following the 1989-90 eruption, and to the planning and emergency response drilling by the company’s personnel, the 2009 eruption never developed into an oil spill incident, Ficken said.

“Not a drop of oil was spilled and no one was hurt. This was a success story by any objective measure,” he said.

And, while not disagreeing with the principle of setting a clear criterion for unified command formation in response to a future Redoubt eruption, Ficken said that an orange alert level — a warning of a pending eruption within a few days — would be a more appropriate criterion than the yellow level recommended in the report.

“We do agree that code yellow should set off a flurry of communications that include meetings with key parties, engaging stakeholders and keeping people informed of the situation,” Ficken said. “We did all that last year, sending out our first informational update on Feb. 9 and issuing daily updates by March 23 when volcanic activity was upgraded to code red.”






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