FEBRUARY 26, 2016--OR&R’s Emergency Response Division recently attended the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) Pollution Prevention and Response (PPR) Subcommittee meeting #3 in London from February 15-19, 2016. Seventy-four nations and 40 related industry groups sent delegations.

OR&R’s Emergency Response Division served as the science adviser to the United States delegation for four of the seventeen agenda items. At this meeting Emergency Response Division assumed a new role by chairing the drafting group charged with finalizing the Oil Spill Contingency Planning Manual, the Guide On Oil Spill Response in Ice and Snow Conditions, and the course outline, instructor’s manuals, and participant’s manuals of the Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Co-operation Model Training Course, levels 0, 1 and 2. Nineteen countries and 13 non-governmental organizations formed the drafting group. Work on the first two manuals was completed but given the volume of material assigned to the drafting group, the model training course manuals will be finished intersessionally by correspondence. The “Oil in Ice” paper came to the IMO by way of the Arctic Council’s Emergency Prevention Preparedness and Response working group, also chaired by a NOAA OR&R staff member.

The United States delegation presented an update on the progress with the Subsea Dispersant Guideline manual and plans to bring the draft product to the Subcommittee in 2017. The next convening of the Pollution Prevention and Response Subcommittee will be in January 2017, but other work takes place before then on the U.S. Coast Guard-led paper on subsea dispersant application and the aforementioned model courses.

For further information, please contact Mark.Dix@noaa.gov.

Go back to OR&R Weekly Report.