Tag: oil spill prevention

After halting operations, due to an oil spill observation in the area of operations, Equinor commenced oil loadings from its Statfjord field in the North Sea, offshore Norway. In the meantime, Reuters reported that the loading are being conducted by a different buoy on the field.

The US Coast Guard informed that it is monitoring a natural gas and condensate leak from an orphan well, located four nautical miles southeast of Bob Hall Pier near Corpus Christi, Texas, on Thursday, May 9. The US Coast Guard is cooperating with the Railroad Commission of Texas, Texas General Land Office and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to monitor and secure the release.

IMCA issued a safety flash that focused on a pollution accident that occurred during bunkering operations. Specifically, the incident took place as the vessel took bunkers supplied by five tanker trucks, one after the other. Because of difficulties during the bunkering operations, the hose was loosened resulting to the oil spill. As a result, the local Coast Guard was informed and arrived at the area of the incident.

An accident during a bunkering operation aboard the Panama-flagged container ship, MSC Sandra, led to a significant oil spill. According to estimations, three tonnes of marine fuel were spilled during a bunkering operation involving the Bahia III barge and the MSC Sandra containership in the Portuguese port on Friday, 5 April.

In order to enhance its response capacity network EMSA announced the launch of a procurement procedure to contract new stand-by oil spill recovery vessels in the Adriatic Sea, West Mediterranean Sea, and Central Mediterranean Sea. The contracted vessels would carry out normal commercial activities and, at request, be transformed and mobilised at short notice for at-sea oil recovery services during an oil spill.

Oil spill incidents seem to occur more nowadays. Thinking of major oil spills, there were three major ones that took place in the US, starting from Santa Barbara in 1969, Exxon Valden in 1989 and Deepwater Horizon in 2010.

Clean Arctic Alliance published a statement in response to the Viking Sky incident, stressing the possibility of an oil spill which was fortunately prevented. Yet, in light of similar incidents, the Alliance focused on banning HFO use and carriage in Arctic waters.

​Guyana is the latest country to benefit from IMO’s work to strengthen oil spill response capacity in the Wider Caribbean Region. The REMPEITC-Caribe training workshop that took place from 18 to 20 of March assessed Guyana's oil spill readiness programme.

According to the prefecture of Gironde, the latest estimates indicate that the oil spill from from the sinking of 'Grande America' will not reach the coast during this week. However, it warned that debris and containers could arrive in the coastline quicker. However, due to the many hazards and weather developments, the estimate of potentially affected coast points is the subject of daily assessments.

After the initial confirmation of oil spill coming from Grande America's sinking, French authorities have sighted another oil slick originating from the sunken RoRo in the Bay of Biscay. The French Navy and Spain's maritime search and rescue agency revealed that there is a third oil spill in the area of the incident, covering an area of about 5 km2.