Tauranga oil spill

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gzt

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#91221 8-Oct-2011 16:26

Short story:

"New Zealand is facing one of its largest ecological disasters as authorities forecast a "significant" oil spill from a huge container ship grounded off Tauranga Harbour. A huge response effort to contain oil still gushing from the stricken MV Rena is under way as authorities face mounting criticism over their handling of the situation"
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10757462

Long story:

Today so far the situation appears to be coming under control, but these things can change rapidly. More gear and specialists are arriving from Australia. Driven by ship owners insurance I think. It is obvious that NZ does not have any kind of rapid response capability for this kind of thing. Not good when we are almost entirely reliant on shipping.

The obvious solution to is to update the law to require all shipping in NZ waters to carry insurance which has a rapid first response time for any events of this nature. The slow response is unacceptable.

If that means an additional cost to the shipping insurance industry (say 5 million) to maintain a largely redundant capability most of the time and keep it up to date, then so be it.

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#530936 8-Oct-2011 17:00

gzt: Short story:

"New Zealand is facing one of its largest ecological disasters as authorities forecast a "significant" oil spill from a huge container ship grounded off Tauranga Harbour. A huge response effort to contain oil still gushing from the stricken MV Rena is under way as authorities face mounting criticism over their handling of the situation"
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10757462

Long story:

Today so far the situation appears to be coming under control, but these things can change rapidly. More gear and specialists are arriving from Australia. Driven by ship owners insurance I think. It is obvious that NZ does not have any kind of rapid response capability for this kind of thing. Not good when we are almost entirely reliant on shipping.

The obvious solution to is to update the law to require all shipping in NZ waters to carry insurance which has a rapid first response time for any events of this nature. The slow response is unacceptable.

If that means an additional cost to the shipping insurance industry (say 5 million) to maintain a largely redundant capability most of the time and keep it up to date, then so be it.

Interesting the Tauranga port company seems to have no capability to respond to an oil spill. If this had happened right in Tauranga Harbour would it be any different?

That feels like.....negligence. "She'll be right" loses again?

Underneath all this is the permits to drill for oil off the East Cape. No capacity to respond?

Is this yet another example of negligence in the guise of cost savings?

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MikeSkyrme

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#530942 8-Oct-2011 17:22

"Interesting the Tauranga port company seems to have no capability to respond to an oil spill. If this had happened right in Tauranga Harbour would it be any different?

That feels like.....negligence. "She'll be right" loses again?

Underneath all this is the permits to drill for oil off the East Cape. No capacity to respond?

Is this yet another example of negligence in the guise of cost savings?"

As I understand it, the harbourmaster is tasked with spill response within the harbour, but has access to the national oil response team depending on the scale of the incident.

As for permits to drill for oil: I thought the permits were for exploration of gas? In any case, there are minimum international standards which an oil / gas company must demonstrate they comply with in regard to oil spill response.

Michael Skyrme - Instrumentation & Controls

Linuxluver

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#530957 8-Oct-2011 18:04

MikeSkyrme: "Interesting the Tauranga port company seems to have no capability to respond to an oil spill. If this had happened right in Tauranga Harbour would it be any different?

That feels like.....negligence. "She'll be right" loses again?

Underneath all this is the permits to drill for oil off the East Cape. No capacity to respond?

Is this yet another example of negligence in the guise of cost savings?"

As I understand it, the harbourmaster is tasked with spill response within the harbour, but has access to the national oil response team depending on the scale of the incident.

As for permits to drill for oil: I thought the permits were for exploration of gas? In any case, there are minimum international standards which an oil / gas company must demonstrate they comply with in regard to oil spill response.

So.....a harbour master with the ability to help here immediately would rightfully sit on their hands doing nothing because it wasn't their job? That makes no sense to me in any real way that matters.

I'm sure "minimum international standards" also apply to the operation of the Rena....for all the good it did.

I tend not to mistake "standards" for actual ability to handle a problem when it arises. The gap between paper and actually doing stuff becomes staringly obvious when bad things happen.

A folder full of awesome standards means nothing.

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gzt

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#530967 8-Oct-2011 18:32

gzt: It is obvious that NZ does not have any kind of rapid response capability for this kind of thing. Not good when we are almost entirely reliant on shipping.

Disagreeing with myself here an hour later - realising NZ does have a response capability of some kind:

http://www.maritimenz.govt.nz/Environmental/Responding-to-spills-and-pollution/Responding-to-spills-and-pollution.asp

This PDF gives a more detailed overview of that capability:

http://www.maritimenz.govt.nz/Publications-and-forms/Environmental-protection/Introduction-to-Marine-Polllution-Response.pdf

Even so, it appears to me the initial response was slow and inadequate.

The whole flying equipment and people in from Austraila days later thing was just sounding like the Pike River scenario all over again.

josephhinvest

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#530972 8-Oct-2011 18:46

I'm amazed and dismayed that so little seems to be happening to stop/constrain the oil leaking.
Ship ran aground Wednesday (not sure what time) and it's now Saturday PM, and not much seems to have happened.
If the oil leak was significantly worse, presumably nothing more could have been done to stop the leak?
This seems pretty lame!

Cheers,
Joseph

old3eyes

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#530977 8-Oct-2011 19:02

Why does NZ not have any oil containment booms like the rest of the world?? Why do we have to get therm shipped over from Australia?? They must have known that this was going to happen one day. Sounds like good old NZs she'll be rite.. Just like our defense force.. Someone else will come to our aid..

Regards,

Old3eyes

robbyp

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#530980 8-Oct-2011 19:22

This is typical 'ambulance at the bottom of the cliff' way of copying with problems, that NZ specializes in. SOmeone needs to be accountable for the lack of disaster plans for this type of thing. There was some arrogant guy on TV3 who was a supposed expert at managing these things, and he said they could rush it, because they hadn't yet found a place to take the oil once they had removed it from the ship. Well mate, anywhere would be better than letting it continue to pour into the ocean, or on NZ beaches.
That ship holds 1.5 million litres, and that oil should have been removed by now.

...And NZ wants to do offshore oil drilling...

NZs clean green reputation is one of it's main selling points.
There is also the chemicals and fertiliser on the ship to cope with too if the ship breaks up.

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gzt

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#530981 8-Oct-2011 19:24

old3eyes: Why does NZ not have any oil containment booms like the rest of the world?? Why do we have to get therm shipped over from Australia?? They must have known that this was going to happen one day. Sounds like good old NZs she'll be rite.. Just like our defense force.. Someone else will come to our aid..

I completely agree with the sentiment expressed, but it seems the situation is more complex than that.

From PDF above: "Response Equipment. [Maritime New Zealand] owns over $12 million worth of oil spill response equipment including containment booms and oil recovery skimmers. This is distributed regionally in accordance with the risk assessment. The equipment is regularly maintained by the regional staff and/or contractors and is audited annually by MNZ equipment technicians"

My expectation would be a specialist national assessment team dropped in immediately. I'm not sure if this happened, or if everything just stalled until the owners insurers got into gear.

BTW, also in there somewhere is a note that the maximum spill we can attempt to contain is about 3500 tons. Didn't read further to get the breakdown on that capability but they have some details in there.

gzt

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#530995 8-Oct-2011 20:03

I'm probably going over stuff that some of you guys already know, but anyway,

This may be part of the problem:

The response flowchart from the PDF: http://anony.ws/di-XKJP.jpg [Can't insert this inline for some reason, maybe exceeded size?]

In summary the flow chart says if the owner of the vessel is 'able to respond' - do nothing.

Regardless of the capacity of the national unit, this seems utterly inadequate.

[Edit: layout]

josephhinvest

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#531070 9-Oct-2011 01:21

Jon at aktnz.co.nz has an excellent post with many details...

http://www.aktnz.co.nz/2011/10/09/latest-on-rena-spill/

Cheers,
Joseph

gzt

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#531074 9-Oct-2011 01:36

That's nicely done. I'll put that in my reader.

I wonder what the dispersant is they are using here?

As I understand it when this practice first started (years ago) the stuff being used was almost the same as dishwashing detergent, which is a relatively minor additional pollution/enviro-contaminant concern.

A lot of comment I have seen from the BP spill in the states, the dispersants they are talking about are a serious bio-hazard in and of themselves.

John2010

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#531138 9-Oct-2011 11:26

Nice to know we have so many naval architects and salvage experts here

.

Has been some comment regarding the use of booms for the oil. Marine heavy fuel oil has approximately the same density as water, depending on the exact grade it ranges from slightly less than that of water to slightly more. So there is highly likely a problem using booms the reason for which I hope is obvious.

Based on the photos and video only (I have not been there myself) the accessible visible (<- EDIT) slick is in the main just the lighter factions floating on the surface. Depending on what they are they may or may not be dispersed - using another light oil example, diesel is generally left to evaporate and breakdown by itself in the open sea.

Getting the fuel oil off the ship may not be as easy as some seem to think. The viscosity of the fuel oil is approximately that of road tar (again depending on the exact grade of oil and the road tar compared to), in use to get it to flow it is heated. It is also quite possible that there are no pre-existing pipework facilities on the ship making the extraction easy, in which case pipe spools would have to be fabricated.

Given the oil has to be heated there may or may not also be problems maintaining temperature in pipework to the barge or whatever it is loaded off to - also the receiving vessel may be forced to stand off some distance. People may be thinking how easy it is for naval vessels refueling at sea - naval vessels are generally fueled with light fuels oils. If anyone here knows all the answers then they best go and offer their services

. Certainly idiotic those who claim the government are better at running the salvage than the salvors and insurers who do it all the time. One has to wonder if the Greens and Labour have even a microgram of business and management sense in their heads.

{Disclosure - About half my time in the last 20 years has been doing local and international assignments for the marine industry but not for the MSA or others involved with this salvage and mainly for smaller commercial vessels. I am not an expert on salvage and would hesitate to criticise those that are. I don't envy them this particular job}.

EDIT: Meant to say that there are also quite good and non-opinionated news releases on the MSA'a web site.

gzt

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#531158 9-Oct-2011 13:32

Really interesting points about the technical aspects of the recovery. Any idea which disperants they are using?

John2010: Certainly idiotic those who claim the government are better at running the salvage than the salvors and insurers who do it all the time. One has to wonder if the Greens and Labour have even a microgram of business and management sense in their heads.

I have not seen anybody here claiming that.

The perception of many people onshore (including me) is that the response has been slow. And with the media initially talking about owners and insurers assessing the situation before seeing any action, many are suspecting the speed of the initial response was dictated by the speed of wheels turning in a corporate bureaucracy - with the responsible government agencies (MNZ I guess) largely taking a 'wait and see' position on the outcome initially when they could have been more proactive.

That said it looks like things are in full gear at the moment. The main concerns are around the speed and co-ordination of the initial response.

[Edit: Followed by NZ's capacity and capability to deal with larger events of this nature]

John2010

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#531195 9-Oct-2011 16:34

gzt:
I have not seen anybody here claiming that.

Well I did not claim they had?

You won't get anything worthwhile from the media apart from a story of some sort - some have even demonstrated their ignorance by calling naval architects "navy engineers"

.

I take from your willingness to claim that assessment of the situation seems to have taken too long that you have the knowledge to make that claim, both of naval architecture and of the damaged and loading status of the vessel. You are therefore no doubt well aware ships of that type cannot be randomly loaded, ballasted or tanks provisioned even at the dock where an on board ship loading system is used to determine stability, hull deflections, etc and plans loading and unloading against those.

So, just for that matter alone, what did you think was a reasonable timescale for the damage survey, determination of the vessel's status on the reef (hogging, sagging, etc), recovery of the ship's design, the structural analysis of the vessel in the damaged and aground state, and the development of an unloading plan from those things?

davemc

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#531199 9-Oct-2011 16:59

Is there any non-official website, more of an interested ethusiast style, that is drawing together all the information?

Some info is out there but it is widely dispersed across many web sites like martimenz.govt.nz marinetraffic.com scoop.co.nz comments on thestandard.org.nz , twitter and many other places.

A few questions I have...

* Can the cranes get close enough, and reach high enough to unload? Which crane vessels? Do we have enough container handling heads for the cranes? How calm does it have to be to clip onto and off containers at sea?
* Is Rena moving about on the reef? Has anyone got a surveyors acurate GPS on the thing and the shore to know? Or triangulation from the shore. Do we have several geekzone members with line of site to Rena, so we can get several bearings? Anyone on Motiti Island?
* Are there any webcams with powerful enough lenses pointing at the activity?
* Can we deduce anything from careful examination of high res photos? Container count, strops condition, hull twist, crew activity?
* Which pub are the off-duty responders drinking at, in order to glean more first hand information?
* Why can the pumps that heat and send the fuel oil to the engine injectors not be used to pump the oil into lines out to the oil ships? Like a dripping tap, even a small line will make steady progress.
* Why is Awanuia called an oil barge when she's a very modern (2009), built for NZ ship?
* Why did Awanuia beat the Endeavour to the scene? Surely the master of the Endevour presses the red button, everyone is action stations, and she's there within steaming time plus an hour. That's what the Navy is for isn't it? Shouldn't it have moveable fuel oil pumps and heaters?
* Would anchoring a very large ship abeam the seas upwind create enough shelter to improve conditions around Rena for divers, salvors, unloaders, oilmen?
* What fish and sealife normally live on Astrolabe Reef? Any comments from people who fish there? Is it hard volcanic rock or soft sandstone?
* Approximately how many tonnes tug bollard pull are needed for 50,000 tonnes deadweight half stranded? Must be some similar strandings we can make an estimate from. Obviously one tug is not enough, but do we need 5? 10? Will they gather up all the harbour board tugs, or wait for several big suckers from Singapore?
* Will they try the hay-as-absorbent method shown on youtube, or does it not scale well?
* Who are the un-named insurers, and do they have sufficient reserves? Have they announced the loss on any insurance insider web sites? Will the sub-insurers of the various cargos be more forthcoming with information?
* What are the family of the crew in the Phillipines saying? Has anyone found a Philipino web site where chatter is happening? Are they up to dealing with the havoc that must be happening aboard now? Have any unions provided information?
* Do we have any commentary from exporters who have spoken to MSC about the expectations on their cargo?
* Anyone managed to sniff wireless traffic to/from Rena?
* Has anyone got a photo of Rena leaving Napier?
* Will the Americans have yet supplied a high res satelite photo from a recent pass, and can we learn anything from it?
* BoP Regional Council obviously flew over the wreck shortly afterwards, but they seem to be saying relatively little. Any links to more comments from them?
* How deep is the deep water under the stern? Deep enough for ship, or drop off to an abyss? Is Astrolabe Reef a sea mount or a gentle rise in the sea floor? Anyone have a sonar profile?
* The containers in the two flooded holds will already be saturated, including their contents as all containers have shrouded open vents in all four corners. What will that be doing to those goods, and what will they already be letting off?
* Is there any source of all of this more technical info? since Maritime NZ are only releasing very brief information.

Hopefully it all unfolds in the least-disaster way, our environment is saved, our export cargo is retrieved, the 32 year old wreck is towed away for recycling, the insurer pays, the guilty party meets justice, MNZ is fully transparent, and our NZ response capability is upgraded with more skills and hard assets.

D

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