DMP’s Senior Environmental Assessors Alicia Lim and Chris Zadow conducting an earlier environmental audit of petroleum operations.
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News Archives
Department assists in Montara incident
Friday, 6 November 2009
The Department of Mines and Petroluem’s (DMP) Senior Environmental Assessor Chris Zadow is being deployed to Darwin this week to assist with the response to the Montara well control incident.
Chris has been requested by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) to fulfil the role of Logistics Officer in charge of the Logistics Section and will assist until November 18.
The Logistics Section is made up of various smaller units including Supply, Communications Support, Facilities, Medical Support, Catering, Finance and Ground Support.
Chris is no stranger to oil spills and was involved, along with Petroleum Senior Environmental Assessor Zoe Jones, in the ‘Exercise Black Jack’, a national oil spill response exercise staged in Port Hedland in 2008, in the Waste Management and Shoreline Assessment teams.
Both Chris and Zoe were deployed to the Pacific Adventurer Oil Spill Response in Queensland in March 2009 as Shoreline Clean-up Team Leaders on Moreton Island and the Sunshine Coast.
DMP is involved in the National Plan and State Marine Oil Pollution Plans as a statutory agency for petroleum operations. As part of the role of regulation of petroleum operations, DMP is closely involved in prevention, preparedness, response and recovery arrangements for oil spills from petroleum activities.
Through the National Plan and State Plan, DMP also has a role in assisting in these matters for other industries including shipping, fisheries and port activities.
As part of this role, all personnel within the Petroleum Environment Branch of DMP are members of the State Response Team for marine oil pollution and two officers are also members of the National Response Team.
This involvement requires regular training and oil spill equipment deployment exercises to ensure that personnel are competent for deployment to an oil spill at short notice.
Over the past few years, representatives from the Petroleum Environment Branch have been involved in clean-up of oil spills within Fremantle Harbour and the Swan River as well as conducting the equipment demonstration at the International Spill Conference held at Burswood in 2007.
The National Plan to Combat Oil Pollution is the responsibility of the Canberra-based AMSA. Each State must also have a State Marine Oil Pollution plan which links into the National Plan and in WA this is the responsibility of the Department of Transport.
Petroleum operators are required to have an Oil Spill Contingency Plan which links in with both the State and National Plans. The industry plans are assessed and accepted through the environmental assessment process for petroleum activities, and as an incident escalates, the various plans are activated.
The National Plan includes arrangements for ensuring that trained personnel and adequate stocks of oil spill response equipment are maintained around the Australian coastline for response to marine oil spills.
In the case of a major oil spill such as Montara, the company initially activates their own resources but then calls on additional resources when it becomes clear that the scale of the incident has increased to require a coordinated national response.
