The Tribune

The Bahamas Oil Refining Company (BORCO) has held its second annual Oil Spill Response training seminar in Grand Bahama.

Russell Miller, emergency preparedness manager for BORCO’s parent, Buckeye Partners, along with international trainer Jason Desantis, National Response Corporation;’s (NRC) southeast regional manager, conducted the seminar.

More than 30 of BORCO’s key employees in the Incident Command System (ICS), which is a part of the company’s emergency preparedness team, participated in the session. ICS covers personnel, policies, procedures, facilities and equipment for both large and small emergencies.

“Here at BORCO, we want to both minimise the chance of oil spills and effectively prepare our staff to handle spills in the event they occur,” said Robert Gaffney, BORCO’s vice-president of international operations.

“While we hope to never implement these practices for an oil spill emergency, the training session was most valuable in educating our staff about emergency procedures.”

NRC, which is located in Ormond Beach, Florida, provides oil spill removal organisation services, including dispersant and aerial tracking resources.

Mr Desantis gave a briefing on the services that NRC can provide for BORCO in cases of oil spill incidents.

“The whole reason for having a training exercise is for improvement, and I think BORCO and the Freeport area are much better for having completed this exercise,” Mr Desantis said.

“Both BORCO and the environment are now much more prepared to respond to an oil spill incident, and will continue to become better prepared due to the expanding relationship between BORCO and the NRC.”

NRC has set up several oil emergency response sites and, via the training session, will provide Tier 2 response services at BORCO. These include incident response, management and clean up.

To help facilitate an effective response, an on-site equipment trailer with items necessary for an oil spill emergency will be stored at the BORCO dock facility.

The trailer includes items such as oil containment booms and a recovery oily water skimming system. By having these items on hand, it will help with initial oil emergency response tactics.

“The training sessions went well, and are a monumental step in us being fully prepared for oil emergencies,” said Dexter Brooks, BORCO’s superintendent of safety and security.

“We deal with an important commodity here at BORCO, and our number one priority is to make sure that our staff, our island and our environment is protected from any unwanted spill.”