Important Notice: Fort Lauderdale Base Closure

Due to the pending landfall of Hurricane Milton in the area of Florida in the United States, OSRL is transferring response operational control for the Americas Region to OSRL's Southampton base at 4:00 PM EST 7 October 2024. OSRL remains response ready on a global basis.

 

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Response services are guaranteed ONLY for Members. Non-members are not guaranteed a response and will be required to sign a Non-member contract. Services and rates differ. Duty managers can be contacted for exercises.

Oil Spill Response Limited Oil Spill Response Limited
News & Media

How does OSRL respond globally

Thursday, February 23, 2017

How does OSRL respond globally

Oil Spill Response Ltd prides itself in responding to oil spill incidents around the globe.

One of the most common questions we hear from our members is “But I’m operating in Country X, can OSRL respond here?”

The short answer is Yes! However we encourage you to dig a little deeper into the work we do in being able to give you this answer.

As we all know, even a medium scale oil spill event could require a large amount of specialist response resources to be brought rapidly into the affected area. This can pose significant challenges on the affected country if not carefully planned, coordinated and managed.

OSRL works with our members in all aspects of the planning phase to:

  • Develop their tiered response capability to prepare them to handle and escalate spills in a quick and effective manner.
  • Identify the logistic support that would be required to support an oil spill response mobilization operation.
  • Conduct workshops targeted at government agencies to help them understand the importance of facilitating entry of response resources.

Without careful preparedness planning, any response operations can experience a range of issues such as:

  • Poor hazard and response objective identification, leading to the use of response resources that may not be effective for the type of situation.
  • An increase in unsafe working practices brought on by the use of inadequately trained local personnel.
  • Failure to identify the correct notification requirements leading to a lack of proper coordination with local authorities.
  • Untested logistics procedures resulting in restrictions and delays in customs clearance for response resources and equipmen.
  • A lack of understanding for the potential imposition of duties and other taxes on these items.
  • Difficulty and delays in obtaining and renewing visas and permits for response personnel.

We encourage our members to involve us early on in their planning process.

Check some of our case studies on our website.

Please feel free to contact me or our Business Development team, we will be happy to explain further about the planning process.

Author Bio(s)

Tristan Barston

Principal Preparedness Solutions Advisor

As a multi-disciplined Senior Consultant / Response Specialist with strong background in organizational preparedness and contingency planning at both strategic and tactical response levels, Tristan is experienced in working on emergency response processes and contingency planning development activities in remote and challenging environments, for both offshore and onshore operations. As he spent his early life serving with the British Military in various engagements around the globe, he is well versed in doing more with less and thinking outside of the normal boundaries of what can be achieved, a message he is keen to pass on to the next generation of incident management and emergency response personnel, through virtual and face to face training, webinars, desk top or deployment drills and exercises.

When not involved in OSRL activities Tristan runs a street dog rescue based in Houston, Texas. He secretly prefers dogs to most humans.