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Oil companies drop appeal of spill prevention terms
Petroleum News Alaska Staff
The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation said March 3 that BP Alaska, ARCO and Exxon have dropped their appeal of eight conditions DEC placed on oil spill prevention and response contingency plans required for oil shippers in Prince William Sound.
DEC said that it had worked with the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens Advisory Council and the companies over the past few weeks to clarify what contested sections of the plan required. Ajudicatory hearings on the plan were to have begun later in the month.
In a conference call March 3 with chief administrative law judge Shelley Higgins in the state Department of Administration, the companies agreed to drop their appeal and meet all of the state’s conditions for the spill-response plan.
“We have talked with the state, clarified what they want and determined what we can live with,” said Ronnie Chappell, spokesman for BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc.
DEC Commissioner Michele Brown said that “DEC was not willing to lessen these plans’ protection of Prince William Sound. We are glad that BP, ARCO and Exxon now agree with DEC.”
Plans approved in November In November of last year DEC approved the contingency plans, which cover approximately 22 oil tankers operating in Prince William Sound carrying trans-Alaska pipeline system oil to the West Coast and to the Far East. The shipping subsidiaries of BP, ARCO and Exxon appealed several plan requirements in early December, including:
• Development of geographic response strategies for Prince William Sound and the outer Kenai Peninsula to better protect selected streams, bays, and other sensitive areas, some of which were oiled in the Exxon Valdez spill;
• Improvements in the system to train fishing vessel crews to respond to an oil spill;
• Revisions to oil spill scenarios to demonstrate that the planholders have a response system that meets the state’s planning requirements;
• Development of contracts with barge operators to store oil recovered during an oil spill response; and
• Development of a procedure for reporting tanker accidents and near misses to DEC.
—The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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