in general defined as within 24 hours. However, in particularly sensitive areas it has been defined as within 1 hour, which in practice means that you will need to have a particular vessel on standby at the oil rig. In order to get the necessary approval for its contingency plan, the company will have to make the presumptive evidence that it is able to fulfil this requirement. Through exercises it may demonstrate whether it does in fact meet them. This criterion may also be applied for the contingency system that is run by the State. For instance you may say that if an oil spill incident occurs in a particular area, the maximum time for response is x hours. The different parts of the coast may have different times for response based on the variation in environmental vulnerability.
Treatment capacity is a measure of how much oil the equipment may deal with per time unit under different environmental conditions. This is a criterion used then for defining the amount of oil that the equipment included in a contingency system may recover by oil booms and skimmers within a certain period of time under given whether conditions. If the equipment in a real situation meets the defined treatment capacity, then the operator meets the expectations to his equipment.
Professional skill is the level of competence and availability of competent personnel to run an oil spill operation. The level of competence may be defined through what kind of particular education and instruction that is undertaken. The availability of competent personnel is how many people with that level of background a company may mobilise in an emergency situation. A requirement for getting approval of a contingency plan may according to this criterion be that a particular number of employees in a company may have to go through a certain educational programme in oil spill combattment.
Endurance is how long the organisation may run an oil spill combattement operation efficiently without a reduction in the treatment capacity and professionality. This criterion is used in order to define how many oil spill recovery systems and teams of crew an operator should have available.
The application of such criteria may meet several needs. In particular they may be used as a basis for a decision on which specific requirements a contingency system shall fulfil. In the context of the policy aspects of contingency planning this is useful for the purpose of bringing the general expectations to the contingency system down to a more realistic level. That should be in the interest of all concerned.
2. Legal and organisational aspects of contingency planning
The legal regulations related to contingency planning is the point of departure for how the contingency system on a superior level is organised. This paper will in the following present the contingency system in Norway, how it is regulated and how the organisational response has been in order to fulfil the legal requirements.
a) The private contingency system
The Norwegian legislation on acute pollution is laid down in the Pollution Control Act of 13 March 1981, Chapter 6. Art. 40 of the Act lay down the general principle that <>. In other words the obligation of having a contingency system is in the outset an obligation laid upon the private sector. The role of the authorities is to <> concerning the private contingency systems. Art. 41 decides that <> and that <>.
The major industry in Norway that in this respect <> is the offshore oil and gas industry. In order to meet the requirements the operating oil and gas industry has established a particular organisation, the Norwegian Clean Seas Association for Operating Companies (NOFO). NOFO possesses 5 depots containing oil spill equipment and connected personnel. Although the obligation to develop and obtain approval for a contingency plan is directed towards the individual company, it is the NOFO organisation that in practice fulfil the obligation. However, a particular field specific contingency system will have to be established on the individual oil field in addition to the NOFO system. This will be a system for dealing with minor oil spills from the rig and be the first frontier system in the event of a
