Mass oil spill recovery

HISTORY

The grounding in 1967 of the tanker "Torry Canyon" in the English channel, made the world aware about big oil pollution dangers from groundings and collisions of large tankers.

At that time, oil spill response awareness had only started with collecting oil spills from incidents in harbours and estuaries placing oil booms around an oil spill. Stationary oil booms at that time were inadequate to be used at sea.

Considerable human safety problems derived from working from the stern of a Supply vessel deploying and retrieving oil booms during severe weather conditions. Once an oil boom is finally deployed, it is very difficult for the crew to place and maintain oil skimmers, deployed from the same supply vessel, into the oil contained within the oil boom. Sea state, wind and currents, all are conflicting with each other and the crew has to work constantly under very difficult and dangerous conditions on a rolling and pitching vessel, often covered with a layer of oil/water mixture.

The problems with using oil booms at sea were already envisaged during the first oil recovery operations of the grounded tanker "Torry Canyon" ,where after, Mr. Gert Kampers, Managing Director of Koseq, commenced fine tuning his idea for the Rigid Sweeping Arm. Together with the Dutch Coast Guard, the Rigid Sweeping Arm was further developed and tested at sea during "real" oil spill recovery operations in the North Sea.

Koseq has equipped now over 50 vessels with the unique Rigid Sweeping Arm Systems. Trailing hopper dredgers are used because of their large hopper storage capacity, but also tankers, supply vessels and tugs to attach our Rigid Sweeping Arm Systems.

During 1998 the Dutch Coast Guard launched their first purpose built multi-role Oil Spill Recovery Vessel (OSRV) "ARCA", having an oil storage capacity of 1000 m³. Equipped with 2 x 15 meter Rigid Sweeping Arms and purpose built sweeping arm handling cranes. The ARCA has been working on a variety of oil spill recovery operations in The Netherlands, UK, France and Spain, like the Erika and Prestige.

IN PRACTICE

On November 13th 2002, near the Spanish Atlantic coast, the tanker "Prestige" began listing in bad weather and leaking oil.

Eventually the ship broke and sank to the ocean floor, over 3 kilometres deep.

The ship was carrying 76,972 tonnes of IFO 650 heavy fuel oil and the  accident caused one of the largest environmental disasters in Europe of the last decades.

Spain at that time did not have the necessary Oil Spill Recovery Vessels for recovering oil spills at sea. Therefore, several ships from across Europe contributed in recovering the oil.

The European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) compiled a list of the quantity of recovered oil per ship. The best performing vessel equipped with offshore oil booms and a big oil skimmer has been at sea for 45 days and could only collect a total of 600 m³ of oil/water emulsion. This was mainly due to heavy seas and permanent weather changes, having to deploy and recover the oil boom too often, loosing valuable time for the oil spill recovery.

The performances of the Rigid Sweeping Arm Systems during the "Prestige" spill were remarkable. It is documented independently (www.EMSA.eu: "Action Plan For Oil Pollution Preparedness and Response", page 44, that the vessels equipped with rigid sweeping arms are by far the most effective.

The vessels working on the "Prestige" oil spill, equipped with our Rigid Sweeping Arm Systems, e.g. the vessels "Rijndelta" recovered a total of 7032 m³ over 24 days, the "Arca" a total of 5498 m³ over 31 days and the "Neuwerk" a total of 1600 m³ over 27 days of oil/water emulsion, which amounts were far better than the oil recovered using containment oil booms at sea. 

The figures prove that the rigid sweeping arm is by far the best and most superior in recovering large quantities oil (in this case heavy fuel oil), even in bad weather conditions.

NEW DEVELOPMENTS

Koseq produces a smaller version of the Rigid Sweeping Arm: the Compact Rigid Sweeping Arm. The compact Rigid Sweeping Arm is shorter and lighter than the normal Rigid Sweeping Arm, and therefore perfectly suited to be used on smaller vessels.

The Victory Oil Sweeper (VOS) is a unique, patented new Rigid Sweeping Arm System which consists of two floating movable arm sections and a centre floatation section, housing the oil collection pump well containing 2 pumps, with all the advantages of the existing Koseq Rigid Sweeping Arm Systems.

This arm is smaller in the folded mode, and increases in length when extended out.

The Victory Oil Sweeper can be towed like the other types of our Rigid Sweeping Arms, or pushed by a push boat.

All types of Koseq Rigid Sweeping Arm Systems can be equipped with a weir skimmer with pumps or with a brush - or beltskimmer.

More info can be found on: www.koseq.com