APRIL 22, 2016--On April 20, 2016, OR&R leadership, including Dave Westerholm, Tony Penn, and Scott Lundgren met with six individuals from Russia who were selected to participate in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP), on an exchange entitled “Arctic Environmental Protection and Innovative Solutions to Oil Pollution, Prevention, and Response.”

The IVLP group represents a variety of expertise across Russia's oil and gas sectors, including government and industry environmental researchers, emergency responders, and waste management specialists. They were particularly interested in our laws and their enforcement mechanisms, our international cooperation and activities, use of satellite imagery during responses and environmental sensitivity indexing.

Their program opened on April 18 in Washington, D.C. and the group will hold subsequent meetings with other organizations including the Arctic Research Council, American Petroleum Institute, Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), and the U.S. Coast Guard, as well as additional OR&R staff in Seattle and Anchorage.

For more information, please contact Kate.Clark@noaa.gov.

Go back to OR&R Weekly Report.