the Hawaii region as well as in regions such as Alaska, where it is very cold, and also on the Atlantic side, the sea conditions and weather conditions may differ greatly. So the shape of the ship or the equipments to be put on board the ship may differ from region to region. So what may be the criteria employed to decide on those equipments as well as the shape of the ship?
Toenshoff: I'd like to address the limitation in two steps. First, there's a limitation based on the sea condition. These vessels were designed to operate under “defined adverse weather” under the Oil Pollution Act. I don't know what the upper limit of that is. It all depends upon how significant the sea state is. As I was speaking this morning with Mr. Kudo on NAKHODKA spill, with a 10m sea height, it is very difficult to respond. With 6m, it is sill very difficult to respond. That's a very significant sea height. These vessels were designed to operate in many meters. The equipment we have on board was designed in Norway. It's a Frank Mon Transrec system. And it was tested up in the North Sea, which does have adverse weather additionally. I'm not sure what the operational limitation is on the system. However, I would like to also address limitation as a function of time. These vessels were designed to operate for 30 days off-shore, without support. They've got food on board. They've got diesel fuel. They've got supplies and stores on board to operate off-shore for30 days without being replenished by outside sources.
Suzuki: You mentioned “for 30 days continuously.” What happens to the oil recovered? I think you need to store that. What is the capacity of the storage tank in the vessel?
Toenshoff: Our vessel's capacity is 4,000 barrels of temporary storage. However, each vessel has two oil-water separators on board, one on the port side, and one on the starboard side. And the capacity of the oil-water separators exceeds the capacity of the skimmer. As such, our vessels are very efficient skimming mechanisms, where it will bring the oil-water mixture in and it will discharge the water overboard so you will only have, as much as possible, only oil remaining in the tank.
However, I agree with you also that in a very larger-scale operation, where you are off-shore for many days, you need to off-load your tanks. And as such, we own 17 off-shore barges, which are capable of being towed out and having our vessels discharge into the off-shore barge. As such, in the event of a larger spill, we would set up-the American term is a “milk run”-where you would run the barge out to vessel, off-load into the barge, then bring the barge back and off-load to storage tanks, to keep the system skimming as much as possible.
