From Alyeska: Alyeska’s commitments during transition include protection, safe oil transportation, and transparency

Mike Day, Operations Manager for Alyeska’s Ship Escort/Response Vessel System.

Vessel under construction. Photo courtesy of Alyeska.

My name is Mike Day and I’m the accountable manager for the marine services transition, which means that I oversee the internal Alyeska transition team and work with Edison Chouest Offshore, or ECO, to make sure they’re ready to provide services in Prince William Sound in 2018. As a lifelong resident of Prince William Sound, it’s incredibly important to me that we are successful.

I recently spent a few days at ECO facilities to monitor the work. ECO is building nine new tugs for Alyeska, and construction is progressing on schedule. They will be built at Edison Chouest shipyards in Louisiana and Mississippi, before completing extensive sea trials in the Gulf of Mexico or Puget Sound, and additional tests in Prince William Sound.

ECO will construct five new tanker escort tugs, four new general purpose tugs for tanker docking and other activities, and three new oil spill response barges. They will also bring the Ross Chouest, a large anchor-handler already in their fleet, into the system. The new vessels will meet the capabilities of the current fleet, and in many cases exceed it.

Alyeska, ECO, and others designed the fleet to include industry best practices, SERVS’ lessons learned, and stakeholder input. Alyeska has also adopted several recommendations provided by the council over the years including outfitting both escort and general purpose tugs with render/recover winches.

In the new year, I’m looking forward to seeing the progress of the new oil spill response barges ECO will be building in Portland, Oregon. We’re also getting ready to add more personnel at SERVS, to make sure we’re able to meet the needs of the transition and meet our commitment to the safe transportation of oil through Prince William Sound.

As we started work on this project, we developed transition commitments and values to remind ourselves of what’s most important during the next two years:

  • Alyeska upholds its obligation to protect the environment, culture, and resources of Prince William Sound during and beyond the contract transition.
  • Alyeska commits to moving oil safely through spill prevention, with zero incidents and immediate, effective response if necessary.
  • Alyeska respects the value of transparent partnerships with its Prince William Sound area regulators and stakeholders, many of whom live within its unique communities and environment.

We review these values with our transition participant team – of which the council is a member – frequently, and ask that they raise any issues with us. If you have any concerns that we are not living up to this commitment, please contact your local council representative, or Alyeska directly at MarineServicesTransition@alyeska-pipeline.com.

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