Oil Spill Response Services

Click on “Ready” “Response” or “Recovery”

Ready

Having contingency plans in place, that clearly outline the procedures that need to be implemented post-spill, can significantly minimize an oil spill’s impact.

Our consultants work with clients to develop tailored preparedness plans that identify, assess and prioritize oil spill planning scenarios. We collect key information on the type of oil, its behavior and trajectory, and the sensitivities of potential impacted areas, which then feeds into the response strategy plan. This supports the understanding of risk, and potential impacts of the oil spill.

Risk Assessment

Oil spill risk assessment analyze the frequency of oil spill incidents from historical oil spill rates, as well as measures the consequences of potential impacts (costs and damage). Impacts vary with oil type, spill magnitude (rate, duration, volume), and a variety of locationrelated factors such as sensitive natural and socioeconomic resources, and waterway types. Our consultants conduct oil spill risk assessments that evaluate preventive measures, response techniques, available clean-up equipment and resources at risk, such as ecologically sensitive areas and habitats occupied by species of conservation concern. Organizational capabilities of local, regional and national operator and response organizations are also evaluated.

Contingency Planning

Our consultants prepare oil spill contingency plans, Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure (SPCC) plans and marine Facility Response Plans (FRPs) to meet regulatory requirements. As a part of SPCC planning, our consultants perform a wide range of specialist activities in collaboration with clients, including:
• Oil spill modeling
• Environmental and socioeconomic sensitivity mapping
• Oil spill contingency planning
• Operational/tactical oil spill planning
• Shoreline response planning Advisian has been preparing SPCC plans since the onset of the Oil Pollution Act in 1990 (OPA-90).

Environmnetal Sampling Supplies

Advisian provides clients a number of supplies to support scientific and operational environmental monitoring – dedicated and secured within 24 hours of any oil spill. Typical equipment held by the scientific response team includes:
• Water quality and sediment sampling equipment and collection jars
• Benthic infauna sampling gear and consumables
• Van veen grab, van dorm sampler, plankton nets, and water quality profilers
• Benthic survey equipment
• Avifauna response kits
• Marine mammal response gear

Response

Should an oil spill occur, our consultants provide full response-plan services, from engineered solutions and procurement of equipment and contractors, to monitoring and oversight of the response effort. Lessons learned from our services to BP as part of the Macondo Incident and the Gulf Coast Restoration, have further trained our staff on the real-world, scaleable requirements for effective response. Advisian also provides:

Oil spill remote tracking and prediction

Air quality monitoring and predictions

Oil spill reconnaissance and surveillance

Oil weathering and characterization studies

Oil Spill Tracking Buoy

The Oil Spill Tracking Buoy (OSTB) is a bespoke technology, developed by Advisian in response to the oil and gas industry’s requirement for instrumentation and expertise in oil spill response monitoring. With a proven heavy-duty design for 50m free-fall deployments and a global satellite tracking system, the Advisian OSTB is an instrument which can be safely deployed from oil rigs, rig support vessels and helicopters.
The OSTBs are fitted with a unique impact-resistant satellite tracking device; for a spill response, each tracker is programmed to wake, locate its position, transmit its location to the dedicated project web interface, and then resume its sleep function. Each buoy has its own identification number and can be tracked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The web interface also allows tracking of multiple OSTBs at once, permitting the end user to map the extent of the spill and ultimately calculate dispersion rates.

Detailed Characterization of Oil Properties

Our consultants determine the physical properties of crude oils, while their character during the weathering process is used to assess the amenability of the oils to various spill response options and particular items of response equipment. This assessment focuses on characteristics such as viscosity, density and pour point, as well as how these characteristics change as oils weather at sea. The evaporative losses of oils during weathering are also calculated, as is the degree of emulsification that occurs.
This enables clients to quantify the presence of toxic hydrocarbons and other compounds present in crude oils that could contribute to the overall toxicity, and to fingerprint the oil for future monitoring purposes.

Air Quality

Air dispersion modeling is the primary analytical tool used to assess the impact of projects on air quality, supporting environmental, social and health impact assessments and occupational health and safety, as well as enabling the assessment of compliance with relevant legislation and standards.
Our consultants have experience in air quality assessments across oil and gas projects, offshore flares and industrial facilities. We have the capability to characterize both near-field and longrange dispersion of hazardous vapor plumes, and conduct pollutant transport modeling.
Utilizing tried, tested and regulator-approved software packages, our consultants develop gaseous release models to determine the OH&S risk to site personnel, as well as determine the overarching environmental impact risk posed from fugitive emissions related to oil spills/releases.

Oil Spill Surveillance and Reconnaissance

Aerial reconnaissance is an essential element of effective response to marine oil spills. It is used for assessing the location and extent of oil contamination, and verifying predictions of the movement and fate of oil slicks at sea. Aerial surveillance provides information facilitating deployment and control of operations at sea, the timely protection of sites along threatened coastlines and the preparation of resources for shoreline clean-up. Observation can be undertaken visually or by use of remote sensing systems.
Our consultants have access to Advisian’s drone and pilot, as well as MSAs with aircraft companies and satellite imagery providers. Advisian’s imagery query website also allows users to draw on a Google map of the area where the oil spill occurred.

Oil Spill Modeling

Our consultants have extensive experience performing numerical predictions of contaminant fate in marine environments. This experience includes weathering and transport predictions of hydrocarbon spills, resulting from losses of well control or vessel collisions, and produced formation water dispersion assessments.
Such numerical assessments can be performed with a number of full 3D modeling tools. Using these tools, a range of methodologies have been tailored specifically at assist EP and OPEP preparation, and to inform field sampling design for environmental monitoring programs.

Recovery

Advisian has oil spill planning and response specialists with strong expertise in shoreline cleanup planning. This expertise has been gained from response actions on a number of major oil spills in a wide variety of habitats and settings around the world. Following the initial response from an oil spill, our consultants provide:

State of the environment surveys

Vegetation cleanup and fauna release

Marine fauna medics and fauna recovery programs

Beyond oil spill planning, response and long-term clean-up, our consultants have advised on litigation, insurance claims and stakeholder interaction. This has resulted in more effective restoration efforts, and reduced damages assessed for clients.

Wildlife Surveys

Our consultants form an oiled wildlife response team of trained and experienced emergency managers, professional wildlife rehabilitators, veterinarians, biologists, marine mammal observers, and other wildlife experts. Together they have developed the Marine Mammal Oil Spill Response Guidelines to provide coordination and communication between the Marine Mammal Health personnel and the Stranding Response Program participants, as well as other state and federal governmental agencies involved in oil spill response, and marine mammal conservation and protection.
Our consultants are mobilized as needed to oversee different aspects of the wildlife response effort.

Environment Surveys

In many countries, data on the types of assets of ecological value is often available through government agencies and publicly available datasets. Our consultants develop and apply reliable maps based on such datasets for high-level decision-making purposes.
Effective ecological analysis requires an understanding of the structural and functional relationships of an ecosystem. Advisian’s biologists and ecologists integrate factors such as nutrient transport and cycling, life support elements, vegetation communities that form habitats, wildlife species interdependencies, and human resource uses and potentials. Our specialists have a wealth of experience in coastal habitat mapping and classification, offshore-continental shelf mapping and coastal resource mapping.

Human Health and Ecological Risk Assessment

Oil spill impacts will almost certainly create contaminant exposure pathways for human and ecological receptors, including consumption of contaminated fish/shellfish and direct contact, inhalation or ingestion of hazards associated with contaminated environmental media. Our consultants provide risk assessment services, including the development of pathways analysis reports, screening level ecological risk assessments (SLERAs), and baseline human health and ecological risk assessments. These services include:
• Short-term effects assessment of fish and invertebrates
• Bioavailability of crude constituents and breakdown products
• Acute/chronic toxicity of water
• Bioaccumulation of oiled sediments
• Toxicity/carcinogenicity profiles
• Dispersant toxicity
• Assessment and incorporation of existing risk factors
• Measuring and predicting changes in risks