Better together – cooperative incident response testing and exercising – Exercise Zephyr ‘22
Phillip Starkins A *A Australian Marine Oil Spill Centre, Geelong, Vic., Australia.
The APPEA Journal 63 S328-S331 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ22245
Accepted: 17 March 2023 Published: 11 May 2023
© 2023 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of APPEA.
Abstract
The Australian offshore regulatory regime places a considerable burden on title holders to ensure that, through regular testing/exercising of emergency arrangements, these arrangements are fit for purpose. Thorough testing/exercising is costly from both a time and resource perspective. Further, across different title holders, pollution countermeasures do not vary greatly. By coming together under a single third-party organisation and running joint industry-based large-scale exercises/tests, title holders can satisfy a number of requirements in a more cost- and resource-efficient manner than doing this individually. Critically, this includes giving confidence to government and the community that a strong collective environmental response exists within the Australian oil and gas industry and that this powerful resource is fit for purpose and ready to respond if needed.
Keywords: containment and recovery, dispersant, drills, emergency response, environmental management, Exercise Zephyr, exercising, oil spill response, oil spill response organisation, oiled wild life response, shoreline clean-up, testing.
Phillip Starkins, BA, MInternatRel (Monash), MPPM (Melb), joined the Australian Marine Oil Spill Centre in 2012, and was appointed as Chief Executive Officer in February of 2023. His roles at the centre have included responsibility for delivery of preparedness activities such as training, projects and consultancy, and leading the centre’s policy and advocacy work in Australia and abroad. Prior to this Phillip worked for both Australian and Victorian Government Agencies in policy and programme administration within the maritime, aviation, surface transport and energy sectors, focussing on emergency risk management and sectoral/business resilience. |
References
Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience (2012) ‘Australian Disaster Resilience Handbook 3: Managing Exercises.’ (Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience, on behalf of the Australian Government Attorney-General’s Department). Available at https://knowledge.aidr.org.au/resources/handbook-managing-exercises/Crompton-Guard D, Croucamp D, Edgeley G (2022) Exercise Zephyr Evaluation Report. (Melbourne)
