Emergency Response: The Oil Industry Spills Its Secrets

TRAINING SOLUTIONS

Emergency response training is rigorous and regulated in the industry, but many companies go above and beyond those requirements. ConocoPhillips, for example, developed a program called Incident Management Assist Team (IMAT), a concept that has proven so successful that it has been adopted by the U.S. Coast Guard.

IMAT is comprised of more than 100 employees in ConocoPhillips' U.S. operations who volunteer their time to train and conduct exercises. The team, which includes workers trained in environmental response, safety response, operations and more, deploys to emergency sites to respond and bolster local resources. IMAT allow the company to pool resources to respond quickly and effectively to a specific incident.

The IMAT concept shows “how we can, as a company, bring a large amount of resources to a focused operation,” Peavler said.

The TEEX Emergency Services Training Institute also lays claim to an innovative training tool in the field: human patient simulators (HPS), computer-controlled human models developed by Meti. An HPS can breathe, bleed, dilate its pupils and perform many other human-like functions. Operators program it to produce symptoms and then track everything responders do to treat the “patient.”

For example, the HPS can be programmed to behave as a worker who has been exposed to a chemical. This person may have come into contact with the chemical and is blistering, or may have inhaled it and now has difficulty breathing. By training with the HPS, response workers can learn how to best respond to the patient's injuries.

“We have teams that are deployed all over the United States and take simulators with them,” Wisby said. “It's an outstanding training environment.”

FIRE AND ICE

The risk of fire in emergency situations in the oil and gas industry ever-present, and responders continually must work to prevent, contain or extinguish flames. Wisby described the scenario of a fuel spill in a parking lot. Even if it hadn't ignited, the risk is high, and responders have to be ready.

“If it's a very large spill, the odds of it not igniting are slim because of cars moving around,” Wisby said. “[Responders must] isolate the area, shut everything down and put firefighting foam on it to suppress the vapors.” Traffic also must be stopped in the vicinity, since vapors from the spill will travel downwind.

According to Wisby, TEEX covers three types of firefighting training for the oil and gas industry:

Exterior — Responders are trained in exterior operations 舒 such as a tank on fire at a tank farm 舒 to contain the fire, stabilize it, protect the facility, protect the environment, extinguish the fire and conduct property conservation.

Interior — This training addresses fires that start inside a lab or building and includes search and rescue, firefighting and ventilation.

Leadership — This component involves incident command to train personnel to manage an incident.

In addition to the heat of fire, the industry also must address hazards that come from the cold.

“The big issue for emergency response right now is arctic and cold environments,” said Marc Hodges, emergency response coordinator for API. “[This] will bring up health and safety issues with the harshness of arctic and cool environments.” API, he explained, is conducting workshops with federal and state counterparts to address the threats to workers in arctic environments.

In such frigid locations, Wisby added, “All equipment has to be designed to function in extremely cold weather. All equipment is heated or else it freezes and is useless.”

Companies also need to consider how long responders can function in those temperatures. “It's hard on the people and it's hard on the equipment,” Wisby said.

COMMUNICATION

In an industry that boasts advanced and sophisticated facility designs, protective equipment, training devices and more, the component that perhaps can affect safety the most is communication.

“The main challenge throughout is communication and coordination with our federal trustees and state trustees and counterparts,” Hodges said. “If we can streamline those communications, develop those partnerships and relationships on all levels, then that would be a major bonus for our industry.”

Things looked different a few decades ago, however.

“There was so much antagonism between the responsible party and the federal [and] the state counterparts, that we realized over the last 20 years that it's better to work together consistently as a goal to expedite the response,” Hodges explained. “The antagonism will only draw the response out, and the only losers will be the environment and the economy. So the best thing to do is to develop those relationships.

“And we have,” he stressed. “I think it's a win-win for the industry, the environment and the economy.”