BSEE releases new oil spill calculators

New response planning tools designed to enable the better matching of systems and equipment to offshore spill response scenarios

ALAN BAILEY

Petroleum News

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has announced the release of four new calculators designed to improve the efficiency of future offshore oil spill responses. The agency says that it will view the use of these calculators as a formal “best practice” for adoption in operators’ oil spill response plans. The calculators will help determine optimum system configurations for three spill response strategies: the mechanical recovery of oil using booms and skimmers; the use of chemical oil dispersants; and the in-situ burning of oil slicks.

The idea is that spill responders will be able to use the calculators to assess the oil removal capabilities of various types of equipment in different oil spill scenarios, and hence enable the selection of the most effective approaches for use in support of particular spill response plans.

“Use of the response planning calculators translates into better preparedness by industry. Ultimately their use should result in more effective responses to spills, and an overall benefit to the environment by improved mitigation of the impacts of oil spills, should they occur,” said John Caplis, a BSEE oil spill response coordinator.

The first of the calculators, called the Estimated Recovery System Potential calculator, assesses the ability of an entire skimming system to encounter, collect, contain, remove, store and offload recovered oil. The new calculator addresses concerns expressed by the Deepwater Horizon Commission over the ability of the existing planning standard to accurately estimate the removal capacity of mechanical recovery equipment, BSSE said.

The second tool, called the Recovery System Evaluation Tool, enables spill response plan holders and oil spill response organizations to explore ways in which they can improve their oil removal capabilities through changes to their mechanical recovery systems. Calculator users can employ the tool’s modeling capabilities to experiment with potential changes to their system components, to evaluate how best to invest in mechanical recovery equipment.

The Estimated Dispersant System Potential calculator brings an update to the Dispersant Mission Planner 2 tool that the U.S. Coast Guard uses to estimate the ability of different aircraft to treat oil on the sea surface by spraying dispersants onto the oil. The new calculator has an improved user interface and more options for spray application platforms, as well as more a more visual and intuitive set of graphical outputs, BSEE said.

The fourth calculator, the Estimated Burn System Potential calculator, will aid spill response planning by providing a new way to estimate the potential for a towed fire boom system to encounter, contain and burn oil, BSEE said.