Watching Government Spill response

These days you can bet that any oil spill off the U.S. will spawn some legislation in Congress.

You can double your bet when the spill occurs off Rhode Island because John Chafee (R-R.I.) chairs the Senate environment and public works committee, which has jurisdiction over U.S. oil spill legislation.

Chafee is working on a bill reacting to an accident involving the North Cape barge, which spilled 828,000 gal of No. 2 heating oil into Rhode Island Sound Jan. 19.

The barge was being towed by the Scandia tugboat, which caught fire during a severe storm and had to be abandoned 6 miles offshore. The unmanned barge, laden with 4 million gal, drifted to shore and ruptured its hull.

At an oversight hearing last week, Chafee said the response to the North Cape spill was better than it would have been without the 1990 Oil Pollution Act (OPA90) Congress passed in reaction to the Exxon Valdez spill.

Rear Adm. James Card of the U.S. Coast Guard said the 5,506 ton barge was 17 years old. OPA90 would have required it to be retrofitted with a double hull or scrapped Jan. 1, 2005. He said the Coast Guard does not know if a double hull on the North Cape would have prevented a spill.

Draft bill

Chafee and Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) are working on legislation to prevent such accidents.

Their draft bill would require the Coast Guard to issue rules by June 30 for the 87 remaining single hull barges working in U.S. waters to ensure that they provide "as substantial protection to the environment as is economically and technologically feasible" until they are phased out.

They would require barges to be manned by trained personnel while in transit and to have an operable anchor.

The draft says if captains fail to exercise sound discretion in determining whether to transport barges because of inclement weather, they could be subject to greater liability than they currently are under OPA90.

Cargo limit

George Blake, executive vice-president of Maritime Overseas Corp., raised an issue that should concern the shipping industry even more than the Chafee-Lieberman bill.

He said the Coast Guard is considering whether to limit single hull vessels to a volume of oil that maintains the cargo in hydrostatic balance with the sea.

Blake said, "Hydrostatically balanced loading rests on well understood physical principles. Oil is lighter than seawater. Where the cargo of oil does not rise more than a readily calculable height above the sea, rupture of a hold in grounding will in effect be sealed by inflow of water.

"However, the height of cargo in tankers, especially those built after 1973, normally is at a level that creates gravitational thrust sufficient to offset the greater density of seawater. This is the cause of oil spillage in grounding, which continues until enough oil has seeped out to establish hydrostatic balance.

"Coast Guard studies have estimated that hydrostatic balancing would save 90% or more of grounding outflow, which represents 43% of all spillage in American waters. But it also means carrying on average 8% less cargo."

Blake said the rule might cost the industry as much as $133 million/year, or about 2/bbl on shipments.