Emergency Response Management of Offshore Oil Spills (eBook)

Nicholas P. Cheremisinoff is a consultant to industry and governments on standard of care as it pertains to environmental management and worker protection. He has more than 35 years of international consulting, business, and applied research and development experiences, having worked throughout Eastern Europe, Russia, parts of the Middle East, Latin America, the Far East, Africa, and the U.S. He has led and participated in hundreds of pollution prevention and environmental health and safety audits of large industrial complexes including refineries, coke-chemical plants, pulp and paper mills, steel mills, pharmaceutical and pesticide manufacturing plants, wood treating facilities, and other industrial operations. He has led and assisted several foreign governments in strengthening environmental laws and trained several thousand regulators and industry personnel on environmental auditing, pollution prevention and safe chemical management through programs sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development, European Union, and World Bank Organization. He is the author, co-author or editor of more than 150 technical books. Dr. Cheremisinoff earned his Ph.D., M.Sc. and B.Sc. in chemical engineering from Clarkson College of Technology. Anton Davletshin is Senior Project Manager for N&P, Ltd, a firm specializing in standard of care assessments. Anton manages sampling programs, conducts historical literature reviews and assists in environmental impact assessments that aid N&P staff in forensic reconstruction of legacy pollution problems. His expertise extends to applications of air dispersion simulations using EPA-approved AerMod used in the evaluation of community impacts from point and area sources of emissions from within industrial complexes. A graduate of Virginia Polytechnic Institute, he holds a degree in Construction Management.

Preface ix

1. Toxic Nature of Crude Oil 1

1.1 High Risk Areas 1

1.2 Potential Impacts 7

1.3 Definitions 8

1.4 Examples of Historical Oil Spills and Their Impacts 10

2. Origins of Spills 37

2.1 Offshore Drilling 37

2.2 Case Study 44

3. Use of Chemical Dispersants 55

3.1 Dispersants 55

3.2 Methods of Applicaion 60

3.3 Types of Dispensants and Commerical Products 62

4. Combating Spills at the Shoreline 93

4.1 Chemical Warfare 93

4.2 Booms and Barriers 157

5. Emerging Technologies 237

5.1 Clean World Innovations and EncapSol 237

5.2 Centrifuges 243

5.3 Skimmers and Response Vessels 244

6. Spill Response and Worker Protection 247

6.1 Countermeasure Options 247

6.2 Spill Response Protocols and Strategies 271

6.3 Worker Protection 336

6.4 The Oil Spill Response Plan 420

6.5 Air Monitoring 429

7. Standard of Care and The BP Oil Spill 443

7.1 The Impacts 443

7.2 The Waxman/Stupak Letter 449

7.3 Standard of Care 462

Index 509

About the Authors 531