INDUSTRY LEARNING FROM OIL SPILLS OFF ALASKA, CALIFORNIA

March 26, 1990
A year after the Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the petroleum industry has learned some key lessons. The worst oil spill in North American waters sent shock waves through the industry in 1989 and served as the catalyst in resurrecting environmentalism as a full-blown grassroots cultural force.

A year after the Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the petroleum industry has learned some key lessons.

The worst oil spill in North American waters sent shock waves through the industry in 1989 and served as the catalyst in resurrecting environmentalism as a full-blown grassroots cultural force.

The repercussions of the spill-not the least of which is a strident antioil attitude fostered by the environmental lobby-will continue to be felt for years to come. Especially affected will be efforts to lease and drill on Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Coastal Plain and on the Outer Continental Shelf.

The Wilderness Society noted the anniversary of the spill in a press conference in Washington, D.C., last week, claiming 10,000 oil spills since the Exxon Valdez had put an additional 95,000-214,000 bbl of oil into the environment. It called on President Bush to end the U.S. "addiction to oil."

But a study released by Golob's Oil Pollution Bulletin, Boston, showed there were fewer U.S. oil spills in 1989 compared with the annual average in 1978-89. Although the 258,000 bbl Exxon Valdez spill contributed to a record high U.S. spillage of 278,571 bbl in 1989, the five spills of more than 10,000 gal (238 bbl) in 1989 compares with spills of that size totaling 16 in 1979 and averaging six or seven/year in 1978-89.

Repercussions will be most strongly felt by Exxon Corp., which will continue to face mounting financial and possible criminal liabilities. It also must cope with a possibly indelible stain to its corporate image due, say critics, to how the public first perceived it handled the crisis.

Exxon, which last week unveiled its 1990 plan for continuing the cleanup in Prince William Sound, is grappling with increasing pressure by large institutional shareholders over its level of concern for the environment.

LEARNING FROM EXXON

Exxon's monumental cleanup effort to date and subsequent flurry of scientific research and environmental studies related to the spill will provide industry a wealth of data for dealing with oil spills and their effects in the future.

And if Exxon made mistakes in handling the crisis in the beginning, it appears that BP America has learned from those mistakes in mitigating the fallout from the Feb. 7 tanker spill of Alaskan crude off Huntington Beach, Calif.

BP recently completed that $19 million cleanup amid good reviews from officials and local citizens in an area noted as the bellwether for environmental militancy (OGJ, Mar. 19, Newsletter).

Although the Huntington Beach spill did not compare in volume or in difficulty of logistics, containment, and cleanup with the Alaskan spill, the public repercussions-with vivid memories of the 1969 Santa Barbara Channel spill-could have been just as devastating.

Chuck Webster, BP America's manager of crisis management, outlined for Oil & Gas Journal some of the steps his company took to ensure that an oil spill did not escalate into a public relations disaster.

ALASKAN CLEANUP PLANS

Exxon plans to finish this year the multibillion dollar job of cleaning up the oil it spilled last year off Alaska, says Exxon Pres. Lee R. Raymond.

Raymond said last summer's $2 billion cleanup effort, coupled with the natural cleansing process provided by Alaska's harsh winter, significantly improved shoreline and water conditions in Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska.

All mobile oil has been removed.

But some oil remains on the shoreline, and Raymond pledged that Exxon, subject to state and federal approvals, will treat areas where there can be a net environmental benefit.

Exxon filed a preliminary summer work plan with the U.S. Coast Guard Mar. 15 emphasizing work in sheltered, low wave energy shorelines where natural cleansing was not as effective.

Otto Harrison, Exxon's Alaska operations manager, said bioremediation and manual breakup/removal will be the most effective, least intrusive techniques to clean the shoreline, with spot washing and tilling in some situations. The company recommends against the use of hot water flushing because it would jeopardize biological activity under way. Bioremediation, on the other hand, proved effective at speeding the cleaning process, said Harrison.

The biggest concern is subsurface oil, although that no longer appears to threaten wildlife or affect water column hydrocarbon concentrations.

Raymond said the scale of this summer's operation and the choice of cleaning techniques will be determined after an April survey of the shoreline to be conducted jointly by Exxon, the Coast Guard, and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (ADEC).

Exxon, which halted the cleanup effort in September for safety reasons during the winter months, expects to resume work in May (OGJ, Oct. 2, 1989, p. 24). The Coast Guard, which has final say about the scale of the operation and the cleaning techniques to be used, was scheduled to respond to Exxon's preliminary summer work plan as early as this week.

BIOREMEDIATION TESTS

In the 1989 cleanup, Exxon and the Environmental Protection Agency conducted tests at two sites of bioremediation.

Alternative fertilizers containing nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients were screened, and a liquid fertilizer, Inipol 22, and a granular fertilizer, Customblen, were selected for the field tests.

Test results, said Exxon, showed a dramatic reduction in surface oil covering in 2-3 weeks. EPA in August approved large scale application. Inipol 22 was applied to 74 miles of moderate to high energy shorelines in Prince William Sound late last summer by small crews with hand sprayers.

Laboratory studies focused on determining likely effectiveness of bioremediation on the oil conditions anticipated this year. The winter studies showed an even higher value for bioremediation than previously recognized, effective at depths to 12 in. and more, said Harrison.

PRELIMINARY REVIEW

A preliminary review by Exxon of shoreline conditions in January and February showed surface coverage of the oil throughout Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska to have decreased 65-75% from the September level. Total oil concentrations in the sediments decreased an average 75% in the same period. More importantly, said Raymond, biological communities, even on oiled shorelines, showed healthy, early repopulation and growth.

For subsurface oil, Exxon evaluated injection of heated water and chemical soaking. Computer models confirmed that heated water injection was not effective because of the limited area influenced by injection.

Meanwhile, Corexit 9580 proved to be the most effective agent available for the chemical soaking technique, Exxon said. However, the amount of chemical required is high relative to the amount of remaining subsurface oil.

ADEC wants to test a method that involves excavation of certain subsurface sediments for cleaning. The sediments would either be returned or replaced with suitable imported material. Exxon believes such a method is too intrusive.

WHAT'S LEFT TO DO

A February survey found remaining oil is generally in the form of a patchy stain or thin coat in sheltered low wave energy areas. Exceptions are scattered tar mat patches and pockets of subsurface oil.

The Prince William Sound-Gulf of Alaska shoreline has extensive rock outcrops, coarse beach material, and highly complex configurations.

More than 80% of the coastline has a high or moderate wave energy level, although shoreline classified as high energy can have localized, protected areas. The variation between mean high and mean low tide in Prince William Sound is usually 10-12 ft. Tide variations increase toward Cook Inlet and range to more than 30 ft.

The character of the oil remaining on the shoreline depends on the length of time it has been at sea and the amount of mixing with water that has occurred.

The three general types of oil remaining are mousse, tar mat, and subsurface.

Oil is present in the subsurface of some beaches due either to penetration through the void spaces between sediment particles or by burial as clean sediment is washed over the oil by wave action.

Of the 18 sites in Prince William Sound where Exxon collected detailed data, six had oil cover less than 5%, and only one had greater than 25% coverage in January. A number of sites have some subsurface oil, but it is present as a film on the sediments or in isolated pockets of heavier oiling. Tar mats were seen at five study sites, but the patches are generally discontinuous.

As of late January, only three of Exxon's 10 Gulf of Alaska data sites had an oil coverage greater than 5%. Occurrences of subsurface oil were limited. Exposed high energy beaches were subjected to extensive sediment redistribution by wave action.

ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECT

Exxon said a review of chemical, physical, and biological processes affecting the capability of remaining oil to reenter the ecosystem shows that environmental risks are minimal and are being further reduced as weathering proceeds with time.

Small sheens of short duration, while unattractive, have little if any effect on the environment. Also, the lack of significant hydrocarbon concentrations and the lack of significant toxicity in waters immediately off shorelines with subsurface oil provide convincing evidence that slow, low level release of hydrocarbons from subsurface oil pockets does not increase the risk to aquatic life near the shore.

The company said its water quality sampling program has shown the hydrocarbon concentrations measured in the spill area are the same as in background sites.

Average hydrocarbon concentrations measured in the water column for the more toxic components have consistently been well below Alaska state standards and 100-1,000 times lower than those that are lethal to plants and animals living in the water column.

FINFISH, SHELLFISH STUDIES

Exxon said the National Marine Fisheries Service concluded that finfish from the spill area are safe for human consumption. Levels of aromatic hydrocarbons found in finfish are similar to levels in fish from areas unaffected by the spill.

Specimens of mollusks taken from heavily oiled beaches showed high levels of aromatic hydrocarbons. Shellfish tested from less contaminated beaches showed the presence of aromatic hydrocarbons in higher concentrations than in uncontaminated areas but at levels that are not considered a serious health hazard.

If mollusks are consumed, Exxon said, they should not be collected from areas that are obviously contaminated with oil. The state has closed shellfish collection from only one area-Windy Bay on Kenai Peninsula.

Meanwhile, Exxon said, the species compositions of communities on oiled shorelines are similar to those that would be expected on shorelines of similar types in the absence of oil.

The continued existence of biological communities on oiled shorelines, accompanied by the rapid decrease in oil cover on most shores during the winter, should allow for normal biological recruitment in 1990. Furthermore, Exxon said, wildlife activity is robust in areas previously affected by the spill.

BP'S CRISIS PLANNING

BP was training for a crisis such as an oil spill in the weeks preceding the spill off Huntington Beach, putting its newly formed crisis management team through drills, Webster said.

BP last year expanded the scope of its corporate response team to build a sort of "national guard" that can be readily identified and deployed in response to a crisis at one of BP America's businesses or facilities that might go beyond a conventional emergency response.

"We had a major crisis drill in December in which, for purposes of the drill, we had an alky-feed butane leak from a pipeline that involved a flashback and a secondary explosion with civilian casualties, etc., in which we had to pull in a lot of resources," Webster said.

"In January, we had gone through incident command system (ICS) training in Alaska and had been involved in an Alyeska Pipeline drill in Valdez."

The ICS system is an emergency response management approach originally developed by firefighters in California.

"ICS is a pyramiding management system which, in fire parlance, enables you to go from a one company response to a multicommunity response while maintaining an organizational structure that allows you to manage a situation," Webster said.

COMMUNITY INTERACTION

BP found that the communities facing a threat from the spill-Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, and Laguna Beach-also happened to have crisis management systems based on ICS, which smoothed the way for clear, effective communications with those communities.

"What's critically important is to have local people from the mayor to the fire chief to the police chief to city leaders understand what you're doing to protect the environment," Webster said. "There have been times in the past that that aspect of communications liaison has not worked effectively. In this case, it worked very effectively."

BP asked the communities to determine priorities among the beach sections hit by the spill, which the company then put into its cleanup plan, thereby advancing the openings of selected areas.

"This was appreciated by them, and it allowed us to be more sensitive to local community interests," Webster said.

BP also made an extra effort to obtain input from local citizens. In dealing with major beach contamination, the company considered a wide variety of options to remove oil from the beaches, from manual labor to giant front loaders. Before making a decision, BP sought not only the advice of state and federal officials, it also asked lifeguards who lived and worked there about the history and makeup of the beaches.

Webster said, "One of the key things we discovered is that there is an erosion history to the beaches. So one of the things we decided to do was to go for more manpower, to stay away from heavy machinery to reduce the removal of sand. It caused us to choose technologies such as pom-poms and sorbent sausages that got the oil up without removing a lot of the sand in the process.

"That was absolutely the right kind of decision for that environment but one that would have been much more difficult to make had we not taken the organizational approach we did."

TIMING CRUCIAL

BP's crisis management philosophy places a top priority on the early hours of a crisis.

Webster received the first call via beeper of the spill about 8 p.m. eastern standard time, about 30 min after it occurred. The call was from Roger Gale, BP America's general manager of marine operations, who had received a call from BP's port captain in Long Beach that there was a tanker spill off Huntington Beach. The port captain first notified the local industry oil spill response cooperatives.

Webster said, "It is BP's policy that whenever there is oil in the water we send a team with the view that, until we know for sure what caused that oil to be in the water, we will assume there is a hull fracture or something of an equally serious nature.

"As a result, we have sent teams out on spills of less than 1 bbl, with the view that we'd much rather come back for dinner than to find out at dinner we should have been there sooner."

The BP crisis assessment team was on a plane headed west within 2 hr of notification.

By 4 a.m. Pacific standard time, John McDonald, president of BP Oil, and the crisis assessment team were being briefed by the Coast Guard and talking to reporters. By 4:30 a.m., McDonald and Mike Murphy, vice-president of operations for American Trading Transportation Co. Inc., the tanker's owner, were on television's Today show assuring the public the cleanup would be done properly.

From that point, BP began assembling its crisis response team of more than 100 professionals around the country.

"We also made the decision early on that we were going to be absolutely available to the media, that we were not going to dodge questions, and that we were not going to try to put any 'spin' on the story," Webster said.

"And that meant that when things didn't go well, we put that out with the same gusto that we tried to report successes."

MANPOWER, WILDLIFE CONCERNS

BP's biggest problem in coping with the spill response and cleanup was assuring that there would be enough personnel with the proper training-mandated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration-to perform the manual cleanup while maintaining an optimum cleanup force. The cleanup task force at its peak totaled 2,050 persons.

"What we ended up doing was developing a training schedule with concurrence of OSHA that allowed us to use people in spill response but also give them classroom time," Webster said.

That will still prove a problem in the event of a future spill because it is unlikely a company could reassemble the same number of properly trained people.

Webster also cited advances in wildlife rehabilitation by the International Bird Rescue Research Center, which BP brought in for treating and handling wildlife affected by the spill.

"I believe that of the brown pelicans brought in alive, we lost less than 20%. In the late 1960s, the survival rate was something like 3% for birds brought in for treatment."

He contends that although some major strides have been made recently in rehabilitating wildlife affected by spilled oil, industry needs to provide the funding that will continue to advance the science of wildlife rehabilitation.

In summing up the philosophy guiding BP's crisis response, Webster said, "Information is your biggest ally and your biggest enemy. The more people understand about what you're doing and why you're doing it the better shape you're in.

"If we ever have to go out again, we'll have the benefit of what we learned from this one. Handling oil spills is not a science, but we're trying to approach it that way to learn as much as we can so there is less chance involved and we're making decisions based on a rational assessment of the past."

Copyright 1990 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.