Developing equipment capacity standards for oil spill preparedness

Transport Canada is proposing regulations to update and improve the oil spill preparedness requirements for Transport Canada-certified response organizations and oil handling facility operators. The proposed Regulations have been pre-published in Part I of the Canada Gazette and are available for comment until September 5, 2024. One proposed regulatory change includes incorporating by reference an equipment capacity determination standard to be included in the Environmental Response Standards. This would require response organizations to use a calculation standard to demonstrate that they have enough equipment to respond to an oil spill of up to 10,000 tonnes.

Once the draft Regulations come into force, the equipment capacity standard would be made part of the Environmental Response Standards, a technical guidance document that supports and provides context to the Environmental Response Regulations. In the meantime, you can view a draft version of the revised Environmental Response Standards taking into account the proposed Regulations.

If you have any feedback, please submit your comments by September 5, 2024, to the Canada Gazette website or to EnvResRegs-RegsIntEnv@tc.gc.ca.

On this page

• Equipment capacity determination standard to be incorporated by reference
  • Total rated response capacity determination
  • Equipment capacity determination:
  • Recovery device capacity determination
  • Storage capacity determination
  • Boom determination

Equipment capacity determination standard to be incorporated by reference

The calculations are intended to be used by a Response Organization (RO) for certification purposes to quantify minimum recovery, storage, and boom equipment requirements to a maximum quantity of 10,000 tonne response capacity as prescribed in Section 17 of the Environmental Response Regulations.

Total rated response capacity determination

The total rated capacity of an RO is a volumetric determination of response capability based on calculations of available equipment and resources that an RO intends to use in responding to oil pollution incidents in its geographical area of response.

The following factors must be applied when determining the total rated response capacity:

1. Daily Rated Capacity (DRC) of the RO shall be determined using the formula:

   DRC = Planned Volume ÷ Number of Operating Days

   Where:

   1. Planned Volume is the maximum oil volume for which the RO requests certification.
   2. Number of Operating Days is the number of days the RO plans to operate in order to recover the maximum quantity of oil for which it requests certification, as specified in section 17 of the Regulations.
2. Response planning must consider the requirements related to the planning time standards described in section 24 of the Environmental Response Regulations.
3. An RO must have 150-tonne of dedicated capacity for each Designated Port located in their geographical area and that capacity shall not be included as part of the equipment in determining the RO's total rated response capacity.

For planning and certification purposes, the following assumptions are to be applied in determining response capacity:

4. If oil contaminates the shoreline, 10% of shoreline oil will be recovered by means of on water operations, requiring skimming, containment, and storage equipment, as per section 23 (1)(b) of the Regulations.
5. Response Organizations shall plan to recover all the oil in unsheltered and sheltered waters within 10 days as per section 23 (1)(a) of the Regulations.
6. The on-water portion of shoreline clean-up operations shall be completed within 50 days, as per section 23 (1)(b) of the Regulations.

Equipment capacity determination:

The following assumptions and factors are used for planning and certification purposes. They must be applied when determining the rated capacity of the equipment to be presented in the RO's plan:

Assumptions:

1. Evaporation and natural dispersion shall not be considered in the calculations.
2. For planning purposes, recovery operations remain constant and are not impacted by factors such as environmental conditions, equipment breakdown or operator error.
3. For planning purposes in Designated Ports, operating environments are assumed to be 50% sheltered waters and 50% shoreline (see schedule 2 of the Regulations). Percentages may be adjusted based on assessment by the RO and approval from the National Review Board.
4. Oil thickness is assumed to be 1 cm.
5. Specific gravity of oil spilled to be 1.0.

Factors:

1. The ROs must have sufficient resources to conduct recovery operations in all defined operating environments simultaneously as per section 23 of the Environmental Response Regulations.
2. Equipment capability must be apportioned in coordination with the percentages of operating environments described in schedule 2 of the Environmental Response Regulations.
3. Equipment must be capable of operating in all operating environments up to a maximum sea state of Beaufort Four.

Recovery device capacity determination

1. Recovery rate for skimming devices must be expressed as derated capacity using the following formula:

   Derated Capacity = Nameplate Capacity x derating factor

2. The derating factor shall be 20% of the nameplate capacity unless a change is approved by the Minister.

3. Daily recovery rate of the skimming device is then calculated by:

   Daily Recovery Rate = Derated Capacity x Hours of Operation

   Where:

   1. Hours of Operations is the number of hours during which on-water recovery operations will be conducted and recovery devices will be in operation, as defined in 18(1) (p) of the Regulations.

Storage capacity determination

Storage Calculations are to be based on section 23 of the Environmental Response Regulations and will include;

1. a sufficient primary temporary storage capacity to maintain recovery operations of oil or oily-water waste during a 24-hour period.

   Storage of liquid oil and oily water waste requirements are calculated using the nameplate capacity of the recovery device without the application of the derating factor (20%) since both oil and water are collected during recovery operations. Therefore, the quantity of primary storage required to support any recovery device is equal to the amount of liquid that would be recovered using the nameplate capacity of that device multiplied by the number of hours the device would be in operation.

   Primary Storage = Nameplate capacity x Hours of Operations

2. a sufficient secondary temporary storage capacity to store at least twice the total quantity of oil or oily-water waste collected by the RO's oil recovery units defined in (a) that is used in a 24-hour period.

   Secondary Storage = Primary Storage x 2

Boom determination

1. Unsheltered waters: minimum of 400 meters for each recovery device

2. Sheltered waters:

   (Bs = 0.625 Hs) + (Bf = 1.25 Hs) = 1.875 Hs

   Where:

   1. Bs is the amount of boom required to contain oil near the shoreline.
   2. Bf is the amount of boom required to contain free-floating oil.
   3. Hs is the quantity of oil in sheltered waters.
3. Protective boom: minimum of 5,000 metres
4. Shoreline recovery boom: minimum of 1,000 metres
5. Designated port boom: oil containment boom lengths are based on 3 times the length plus 500 meters of the typical vessel entering the port plus an additional 100 metres of shoreline protection / treatment to an overall maximum of 1,600 metres. This equipment is defined as part of the 150-tonne dedicated port capacity as mentioned in sub- paragraph 18(1)(i) and section 36 of the Environmental Response Regulations and should not be included in the overall capacity calculation.