EXERCISE WESTWIND – A COLLABORATIVE OIL SPILL RESPONSE BY OIL & GAS OPERATORS AND AGENCIES.

Following the International Convention on Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Cooperation 1990 (ORC 90) and in particular Article 6, Exercise Westwind represented the annual exercise of the National Plan for Marine Environmental Emergencies (NatPlan) conducted in two phases (Strategic & Operational) in May/June 2015. It was the first Australian NatPlan exercise to test emergency arrangements to an Industry led response to a level three (Tier 3) loss of well control from an offshore platform. It also heavily reflected the National Plan (NatPlan) principles of shared responsibility for preparedness and response to oil spills in the full spirit of the OPRC 90.

The strategic phase (being Phase 1) was led by AMSA and exercised a high level of communication and coordination between multilevel government organisations and agencies from across Australia, including the Federal Government’s Offshore Petroleum Incident Coordination Committee (OPICC) and an Industry Crisis Management Team (CMT).

The operational phase (Phase 2) was led by AMOSC and focussed on operational control and command of industry arrangements in responding to a loss of well control event. Over nine months, AMOSC supported by a multi-company Industry exercise writing team, developed the operational phase of Exercise Westwind.

This phase was to fully test the operational strategies deployed though the Incident Management Team (IMT) based in Perth, combined with tactical operations conducted in source intervention, aerial surveillance, fixed wing aerial dispersant application, offshore, nearshore, shoreline and oiled wildlife response in Exmouth.

Exercise Westwind enabled industry to demonstrate its collective capability through the activation of the spill response arrangements with support from the NatPlan. Phase 2 brought together over 200 personnel from 16 oil and gas companies and 11 national/international agencies and organisations, as well as the activation of the Fixed Wing Aerial Dispersant Capability and the mobilisation/deployment of mutual aid vessels and equipment in a multi-agency operation. Exercise Westwind was a successful multi-faceted multi-agency marine spill response, demonstrating Australia’s collective Industry/Government capacity to respond to a large, offshore loss of well control incident in a remote and detached location such as Exmouth, Western Australia.

Exercise Westwind provided Industry and Government with an opportunity to breakdown the ‘complexity’ of Australia’s preparedness response arrangements and represent a ‘simple’ and robust demonstration of response capability to an offshore marine pollution incident.

A strength of Exercise Westwind was the aptitude of the personnel involved, including the exercise writing team, the participants and stakeholders engaged.

AMOSC coordinated the planning and delivery of the exercise with assistance from Industry, AMSA, Federal Department of Industry and Science and WA Department of Transport.

Two hundred oil spill response personnel from Industry, NOPSEMA, AMSA, Commonwealth/Regional agencies and National/International organisations (presented below) engaged at the operational level (80 people) in the IMT and a tactical level (120 people) through offshore and onshore equipment deployments and field based operations. Personnel included company CEO’s, environmental managers and spill response specialists. A critical feature of this exercise involved these participants demonstrating strong leadership, ownership and a willingness to create a response culture during a time of low oil prices and reduced offshore activities.

Real assets including people, equipment, aircrafts and vessels were vital to the realism of the exercise and tested out the links between the IMT and the field (being an 800nm difference). There were a significant number of contributions provided by key management personnel across industry and government to support the exercise. Real-time engagement with source control call-off contractors including Trendsetter Engineering International, Oceaneering Australia and addenergy were immensely beneficial with participants gaining exposure to technical elements including simulations with live ROV survey inspections being ‘conned’ around the subsea space.

ACME Oil Company was a fictitious company formed by AMOSC to enable the amalgamation of 16 Australian petroleum companies to exercise industry arrangements under one ‘banner’ during the exercise period. ACME Oil Company had its own set of credentials, company website and Oil Pollution Emergency plan (that was accepted by the offshore Regulator NOPSEMA for the exercise).

The company also held real time memberships with a number of service providers including AMOSC, Oil Spill Response Ltd, Trendsetter Engineering International, Oceaneering Australia and addenergy Ltd.

Representing an innovative approach to spill response exercising, ACME Oil Company was a valuable and critical aspect to industry and governments participation under a non-attributable banner. Additionally, it enabled safe, widespread lessons to be observed, allowed for real-time testing of arrangements and provided a safe environment for Regulator, stakeholder and industry inter-play. ACME Oil Company and its supporting framework/documentation now provides a familiar and robust template for future national plan and joint company exercises.

The exercise was an efficient and practical solution for Industry titleholders involved, to test shared response resources and to ensure Industry arrangements for responding to oil pollution are in accordance with the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Environment) Regulations 2009. It also enabled government agencies to observe these Industry arrangements and in particular, have the entire gambit of response arrangements show-cased to prove the Industry resolve to successfully respond to a large marine oil spill.

Several milestones were observed from Exercise Westwind, including;

• - High level communication between OPICC and CMT,

• - Integration of personnel from 16 petroleum companies to respond as one IMT;

• - Integration of source control aspects into a mainstream oil spill exercise,

• - Activation and deployment of response contracts and mutual aid arrangements,

• - Testing of the oiled wildlife capability recently developed by Industry and Government;

• - Inter-play between regulators, industry, government agencies, stakeholders and international oil spill response organisations.

Exercise Westwind was a successful multifaceted marine oil spill exercise. In addition to the key achievements mentioned above, the exercise provided ample opportunities for lessons learned. These include;

• - The ‘exercise fatigue ‘aspects of notional tabletop exercising impacted this exercise through the delay in participants coming to the realization (from the IMT perspective) that they were dealing with real assets and people in real-time.

• - Familiarity with operational plans is essential – to ensure efficient implementation of first-strike actions.

• - Common understanding of skills/support available through additional support – personnel underutilised.

• - Further development of ACME Oil Company to include in addition to the OPEP, an overarching ‘Environment Plan’, more operational plans and refined processes and procedures – for use in future exercises.

Collectively, these observations and lessons learned will assist industry and government to improve their health, safety and environmental performance standards. Exercise Westwind brought personnel together with common training platforms, safety standards and objectives and enabled new response teams to form, respond and achieve a common aim.

An independent team of expert evaluators (from industry, emergency services and government) assessed the performance of Exercise Westwind based on the agreed exercise objectives/key performance indicators and captured debrief observations and participant feedback.

A specific debrief session was conducted immediately post exercise to capture the outcomes into a formal evaluation report under the National Plan Framework and distributed to all participants for greater awareness around observations and lessons learned. AMOSC also understands that most of the participating companies and organizations involved have held their own reviews of the exercise to learn and provide value into their own systems and/or processes.

Under the guise of Phase 2 of Exercise Westwind, industry successfully led an effective and coordinated response to a complex offshore petroleum spill scenario in a remote location. Industry is required to assure the Regulator of their response preparedness capabilities and this is a critical element in both the industry and regulator confidences. Whilst this exercise showcased many response aspects, the greatest demonstration of capacity was around Industry and Government’s ability to work collaboratively on a response that had the ultimate benefit to the Australian confidence.

In the future, the companies who acknowledge and implement the learnings from Exercise Westwind around collective and collaborative response will derive the most benefit from the exercise. Also, recognition by the Regulator of recent and ongoing Industry contributions to exercises like Exercise Westwind will greatly improve joint and collaborative exercising in the future.