- Enough booms to cover large areas of the surface. See figure below from NOFO's contingency manual.
NOFO's total strategy, which is based on requirements from the Norwegian authorities, is aimed at minimising the damage oil spills can cause to the environment. A major part of the same strategy is to prevent spiltoil from reaching the coast, or if this is impossible, at least minimise the amount that will.
One elements of this strategy is to recover spilt oil as near the source of discharge as possible. In order toachieve this reliable trajectory models are needed to predict where and when the drifting oil will reach the coast. The response time has to be adjusted if the source of potential pollution is close to shore. The standard set by Norwegian authorities for drilling or other petroleum activities, near shore, which has the potential to cause oil pollution is that 50% of the equipment needed to recover 8,000 m3/day shall be operative within half of the minimum time it will take for the oil to drift to shore, based on recognised drift calculations, and further that the rest of the equipment shall be operative before the oil reaches the shore. If the time it will take the oil to reach the shore is less than 20 hours, 25% of the same equipment shall be located at the installation and shall be operative within 2 hours.
If an offshore oil recovery operation with mechanical equipment shall have any chance to succeed, realistic recovery rates must be established/calculated.
First of all the equipment must be thoroughly tested under all weather conditions for which it is designed. Further, the tests must be carried out with oil on the water surface. Tests where oil has been substituted with other substances have proven not to be reliable. Having in this way established reliable performance curves (see example below) for the equipment, including the vessels, the personnel must be well trained and educated for the task at hand. The human aspect of an oil recovery operation cannot be emphasised enough. Experience proves over and over that without advance knowledge of the conditions that may be expected in the operations area, such as winds, waves, currents etc.-and without planning and training, oil spill recovery can be anything from unsuccessful to disastrous.
