The Incredible JourneyAmerican life revolves around travel. Travel to jobs, shopping areas, and vacation destinations. Trips around the block, trips around the country. Most of these trips—made by aircraft, train, bus, motorcycle, or automobile (especially automobile)—are powered by petroleum products. But as we fuel our cars at the gas station, we rarely stop to think of the incredible journey now completed by those gallons of gasoline as they course through the pump and into our cars, SUVs, and minivans. No matter where the petroleum originated, its journey from the well to the refinery (then on to terminals, bulk plants, and end users) likely included a giant tanker ship, pipelines, barges, railroad tank cars, and tanker trucks.
Many different entities can be responsible for transporting oil products. These include the producer, refiner, pipeline, or a downstream distributor like a terminal operator or independent marketer. Or a common carrier can do it while having no other connection to the oil business than shipping product from one location to another. But that product is a vital one for powering our transportation system, not to mention industry, commercial businesses, schools, and the homes of American citizens—providing the high level of freedom we’ve all come to expect.
The oil and natural gas industry is committed to transporting oil safely, protecting the environment at all times. Petroleum products move over great distances with unprecedented safety and minimal environmental impact, thanks to the latest technology and preventative measures for building and operating tankers safely, and training tanker captains and crew.
Two Hulls Are Better than OneAll day all night—every day, every night—a worldwide fleet of oil tankers silently move petroleum products toward refineries in the U.S. We don’t often hear about them, we usually don’t see them, but these tankers impact our lives in amazing ways as they help to provide a steady, seamless flow of oil that literally powers our lives. Part of their silence results from the many industry safeguards; the only time we hear about oil tankers is when they spill oil, and they rarely do that these days because of design improvements made in the past 15 years. In fact, the performance record of tankers regarding spills has been outstanding.The massive oil spill in Alaska in 1989 not only affected the shoreline and seascape of Alaska, it also changed the fundamentals of oil tanker design and use. In a conventionally designed oil tanker, the outer hull serves as the inner wall of the cargo tank. Compromise one, and you compromise the other. Most oil spills result when a single hull is punctured by grounding.
The U.S. Coast Guard concluded that if the tanker had been designed with a double hull, its spill would have been reduced by between 25 and 60 percent. Another contributing factor involved the fatigue of the third mate maneuvering his ship near Prince William Sound on the night shift. The National Transportation Safety Board listed fatigue as a primary cause of the mishap, and recommended that steps be taken to prevent fatigue in those working within the transportation industry, including changes in regulations related to hours of service, development of methods to combat fatigue, and educational requirements.
The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 addressed transportation of oil by sea-going tanker. This law ordered the gradual replacement of the single-hulled Alaskan oil tanker fleet with new inner- and outer-hulled tankers. About 6 to 10 feet of space separates the two hulls. This tanker design literally doubles the protection to our environment while continuing to silently and speedily move oil from place to place.
The double-hulled design of the modern tanker fleet clearly works. Consider the October 31, 1997 incident in which a Conoco double-hulled tanker, the Guardian, was rammed by a barge as it carried more than a half-million barrels of crude oil off Louisiana. Although the barge ripped a 400-square-foot horizontal gash in the steel outer hull of the Guardian, not one drop of oil made it into the water, thanks to the ship’s double-hulled construction.
Over the past decade, According to the U.S. Coast Guard, less than 200 barrels (about 8,400 gallons) were spilled out of over 3.2 billion barrels of oil delivered by tankers to the U.S. in 1999. The total volume of oil spilled from tankers in the U.S. has remained below 7,000 barrels annually from 1991 to 1999. This good news will get even better as new double-hulled tankers replace older ships every year. In fact, all tankers operating in U.S. ports will have double hulls by the year 2015.
Planning to Respond to SpillsThe most effective method of preventing oil spills during transportation is the double-hulled tanker invented in the 1980s and put into wide use beginning in 1990. Likewise, monitoring and maintenance technologies for pipelines have also led to much better prevention of spills and releases. But what happens if oil spills despite industry’s state-of-the-art prevention efforts? Spills can happen on land from a pipeline, truck, or railroad tanker car. Or they can happen on the sea in a supertanker carrying hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil at one time. In either case, spills today are controlled and cleaned up swiftly, comprehensively, and safely.In the 21st century, contingency planning for oil spills involves a variety of organizations within the spill response community, including:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
The U.S. Coast Guard’s National Response Center
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Research and Special Programs Administration and Office of Pipeline Safety
The Minerals Management Service (MMS)
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Response and Restoration
Oil companies
Wildlife organizations
State environmental agencies
Local governmental bodies
How do these organizations prepare to deal with oil spills? Practice, practice, practice. The National Preparedness for Response Exercise Program (PREP), a voluntary program, ensures that federal requirements for spill response management are maintained. PREP involves exercises within individual organizations, and a variety of joint exercises among organizations, that ensure a constant state of readiness within the spill response community. These exercises run the gamut from simple to complex, and are initiated by the spill response plan holder of each individual tanker or facility when a certain spill amount is exceeded. The exercises include:
Qualified Individual Notification Exercise to make sure that the key people in response plans can be reached, especially during non-business hours.
Emergency Procedures Exercise to ensure that key individuals are prepared to take the initial steps necessary to contain oil spills.
Spill Management Team Tabletop Exercise to test the spill response plan.
Emergency Deployment Exercise to test both the response personnel and equipment.
Internal Unannounced Exercise (in one of the above four formats) to test the readiness of personnel in simulated emergency conditions.
Government-Initiated Unannounced Exercise to give the agency (the Coast Guard, EPA, or MMS) with primary responsibility over an industry the opportunity to evaluate the state of spill response readiness.
Triennial Exercise of the Entire Response Team to test all components of the spill response plan (notification, mobilization, team conduct, equipment, containment of the discharge, protection of sensitive areas, etc.).
Area Exercise to involve the entire response community in a geographical area and test the coordination of government and industry.
The nation’s spill cooperative networks also include wildlife specialists who are essential to the rescue of birds and marine mammals in spill situations. The handling of such wildlife involves complex processes and hundreds of hours of training. Depending on the industry and area, wildlife contingency planning could include the rescue and rehabilitation of birds, walruses, harbor seals, sea lions, sea otters, fur seals, and other species.
Spill prevention takes many forms, including the Coast Guard’s innovative Prevention Through People Program. Prevention Through People approaches marine safety and environmental protection by looking at the root cause of most accidents: the human element. The program involves best practices, studies, and lessons learned, speaker’s packages, and a variety of other tools all designed to optimize human actions and therefore minimize spills on the water.
The War Against SpillsOf course, the best spill is one that never happens in the first place. But for those occasions when a spill does occur, spill response contingency planning, preparedness, and exercises are proving to avert potential environmental damage.
The moment that word reaches the U.S. Coast Guard’s National Response Center concerning a waterborne oil spill, all the planning and all the drills result in instant action. The Coast Guard’s National Strike Force Coordination Center activates the Atlantic Strike Team, Pacific Strike Team, or Gulf Strike Team to pinpoint, contain, and minimize the spill in U.S. waters.
The U.S. Coast Guard Field Operations Guide serves as the bible for spill response. It includes information on all the major objectives of a typical spill incident:
Ensure the Safety of Citizens and Response Personnel
Control the Source of the Spill
Manage a Coordinated Response Effort
Maximize Protection of Environmentally Sensitive Areas
Contain and Recover Spilled Material
Recover and Rehabilitate Injured Wildlife
Remove Oil from Impacted Areas
Minimize Economic Impacts
Keep Stakeholders and Public Informed of Response Activities
Upon notification, Coast Guard strike teams deploy spill response vessels that are kept in a 24-hour state of readiness all along the coastal United States. These boats carry booms and skimmers to limit the spread of oil on the water. At the same time, a command post is established by the EPA On-Scene Coordinator, local officials are notified of the spill, and helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft fly to the area to track the movement of oil and determine the spill trajectory. It’s critical at this point to identify resources at risk, including shorelines, drinking water supplies, wildlife, or other environmentally sensitive areas.
First and foremost at the site, the spill must be contained at its source. In the case of a tanker, this means that the breached hull must be sealed. As crews work on the tanker, Coast Guard response vessels, working in concert with the plan holder’s Oil Spill Response Organization (OSRO), deploy containment booms, skim oil from the surface of the water, and apply gelling agents. Time-sensitive technologies may be deemed appropriate for use, including the spraying of dispersants by air, or in-situ burning of oil on the water’s surface.
Wildlife response also kicks in. Hotlines are established, and wildlife response teams hurry to the area to set up triage units for the handling of birds and other affected wildlife. Back at the spill area, scare tactics such as propane air horns, helium balloons, and floating dummies keep birds and other wildlife away from the contaminants.
At the perimeters of the spill, the Coast Guard deploys marker buoys that warn ships and pleasure boats away. Oil-only adsorbents and universal absorbents lift and hold oil for surface collection. If the spill reaches shore, cleanup teams will be waiting to remove the oil.
This level of environmental protection happens because of the tremendous commitment made to practice each and every action that makes up effective spill. In this way, oil continues to flow safely and abundantly to America without damage to the environment.
Keeping It in the PipelineToday, more than 200,000 miles of oil pipeline criss-cross the continental United States. Thanks to pipelines, oil is always on the move, providing America with a stable and reliable source of fuel. This massive infrastructure, as critical to our way of life as highways, electrical power lines, or cellular telephone towers, has been built underground not only for aesthetic considerations but also for environmental, cost, and security reasons.
The most dramatic use of pipelines can be seen in Alaska, where the pipes sit above ground and run for 800 miles from Alaska’s North Slope to the ice-free port of Valdez. Completed in 1977, the pipeline took more than two years and $8 billion to build—the largest privately funded construction project of its time. The Alaska oil pipeline has its own spill contingency plan, as does the port of Valdez.
Who oversees safety issues for the remainder of the nation’s oil pipelines? Federal pipeline statutes provide for exclusive federal authority to regulate interstate pipelines. The Department of Transportation’s Office of Pipeline Safety can authorize a State to act as its agent to inspect interstate pipelines, but retains responsibility for enforcement of pipeline regulations. Most States have supported the concept of common stewardship in pipeline safety. The resulting federal/state partnership allows leveraging of resources to deliver a cost-effective program, with one of the best safety records in transportation. In fact, line pipe has experienced initial losses of about one gallon per million barrel miles over the 1995-2000 period. In household terms this is less than one teaspoon of oil spilled per 1,000 barrel miles of oil transported (1).
The pipeline industry has developed a strong spill prevention ethic, and works aggressively to make sure that all pipeline operators have access to best practices and guidelines on spill and response planning and implementation.
Environmental safety is also assured through advanced pipeline technology that communicates information about the integrity of pipelines along the system from refineries to distribution points, while keeping a variety of fuels moving. Planes fly over pipelines looking for unauthorized digging or earth-moving that could damage underground lines, or for evidence of small leaks. In addition, computerized controls permit strategic shutdown should a line break occur.
Controllers also rely on high-tech sentinels to inspect pipelines from the inside. These computerized sensors, which resemble giant bullets, have the unlikely name of smart pigs and travel through pipelines detecting thinning caused by corrosion or damage caused by unauthorized excavation too near the pipeline. Such weaknesses could lead to broken lines in the future. The most sophisticated smart pigs contain magnetic flux or ultrasonic sensors that identify corrosion, dents, and gouges on the interior of a pipeline. Some smart pigs can change size, which facilitates their movement through different-sized pipelines and past gate valves. All pipelines built today are required to accommodate smart pigs.
To maintain a focus on pipeline safety, the API Pipeline Awards Program acknowledges pipeline companies who demonstrate a clear focus on worker safety, environmental protection, and pipeline system performance.
Americans rely on the oil and natural gas transportation infrastructure—without even knowing it—to keep tankers, pipelines, railcars, and tank trucks operating safely, cleanly, quietly, while protecting our environment 1 To equalize comparisons, one barrel transported one mile equals a "barrel-mile."
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