Oil Spill Assessment

 

Exponent scientists have more than 40 years of experience in assessing the impacts associated with oil spills, providing consulting services to most of the major international oil companies, as well as pipeline, oilfield engineering design and service companies. In addition, our scientists have supported U.S. and international governments in responding to and assessing spill impacts.

Our services include:

• Emergency environmental response - cleanup and monitoring chemistry 
  • Source characterization/fingerprinting 
  • Contamination assessment 
  • Background and baseline assessment 
• Monitoring and NRDA 
  • Exposure and bioavailability assessment 
  • Shoreline surveys and ecology studies - impact and recovery 
  • Restoration 
• Database development 
• Geospatial analyses 
• Training

Emergency Environmental Response – Cleanup Monitoring Chemistry

Rapid environmental response is critical to the effective oil spill management. Exponent scientists are on call for immediate response to oil spill incidents. Our response experience focuses on environmental monitoring, assistance to spill clean-up efforts, ephemeral sampling and hydrocarbon chemistry. In complex cases involving releases into urban estuaries or industrial settings a strong scientific approach is critical to reconstructing the release, assessing injury, establishing causation, and defining the baseline. Our scientists and engineers excel in the area of source characterization and petroleum fingerprinting, and our clients rely on our combined experience in petroleum fate in the environment to accurately assess impacts and allocate those impacts to various sources.

Monitoring and Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) 

One of Exponent’s core, signature business areas is that of NRDA. Exponent has been a pioneer and a trusted consultant on NRDA issues since the first regulations were developed. Our team has unparalleled experience and depth in supporting industry in the area of NRDAs under the Oil Pollution Act (OPA), and under state claims. The fate of spilled oil in the environment must be understood in order to predict the potential for exposure of ecological receptors. Exponent’s team of petroleum chemists and toxicologists have extensive experience with determining exposures associated with oil spills, as well as issues related to the persistence and bioavailability of oil in the environment, and the use of biomarkers as measures of exposure. Our clients rely on our combined experience in contaminant assessment and biological injury assessment, along with our knowledge of transport pathways to help assess injury and allocate those injuries to various sources.

Geospatial Analysis

Exponent scientists have evaluated the geospatial implications of different oil spill response strategies on shoreline impacts. Our work has focused on the development of a GIS from base shoreline maps obtained from aerial photographs. The analysis of possible shoreline impacts from oil spills relies, in part, on the type of shoreline being affected. Our team of aerial imagery and GIS specialists evaluated the shoreline typing, and have determined that the usability of aerial photographs to populate a GIS system, and hence to assess oil spill impact and persistence, is highly dependent on the timing and quality of the aerial images. This finding is especially important when it comes to the timing of tides and image acquisition where significant offsets and errors in shoreline typing can occur without such recognition. 

 

Database Development

Exponent has developed a customizable database and interface to store, summarize, and display environmental data from a wide variety of sites and investigations, and has been customized for oil spills. Analytical data, photographs, chromatograms, and scanned documents can be linked to individual data points. The database has a web-tool protected interface that is setup for individual users and includes customized data selection tools which allow simplified searches, selection and download of data sets based on end-user needs. The data output(s) from the database can be Access or Excel format spreadsheets that can be downloaded by the user for further data analysis and interpretation. Thus no knowledge of Access will is required of the end-users.

Training

Exponent scientists have conducted oil spill training programs and seminars for clients worldwide. The training includes all of the environmental issues and response strategies and methods that are part of the short and long term response efforts. Our primary focus is on environmental sampling, NRDA, environmental monitoring and chemical fingerprinting, but also includes shoreline assessment, toxicity assessment and other oil spill related issues.

Exponent Oil Spill Experience

• Amoco Cadiz 
• Argo Merchant
• Bayway Refinery (Arthur Kill)
• Cosco Busan 
• Deepwater Horizon
• Ever Reach
• Exxon Valdez
• Haven
• Ixtoc I
• Katina
• Kure
• Kuroshima
• Martinez Refinery (Suisun Bay)
• New Carissa
• Newton Lake
• North Cape
• Perth Amboy (Arthur Kill)
• Prestige
• ROPME Sea
• Tsesis