An area of concern for any offshore oil development beyond the "transition zone", the zone where multi-year ice and landfast ice meet, is Escape, Evacuation and Rescue (EER). Due to the unique environmental conditions, e.g large ice ridges, conventional evacuation methods such as lifeboats may not be sufficient. The unique environmental challenges in the Alaskan OCS and their potential impact on EER will be described. A feasibility assessment focused on the secondary evacuation component of EER will also be described. This assessment consisted of establishing performance standards related to the expected operating environment, identification of proven and novel evacuation methods, evaluation of these methods versus the performance standards, and prioritization of future work. Finally, recently-conduted data collection and analysis and technology maturation studies related to EER will be discussed.
Abstract-A site-specific marine water-quality criterion for cyanide was developed for Puget Sound, Washington, USA. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) national cyanide water-quality criterion is driven by toxicity data for the eastern rock crab, Cancer irroratus, a species not resident to the U.S. western coast (West Coast). The reported LC50 for C. irroratus is six times lower than any other marine species tested. Cyanide acute toxicity tests were conducted using first stage zoeae of all four species of Cancer spp. resident to Puget Sound to develop a site-specific criterion for this water body. Testing with Puget Sound Cancer spp. reveals sensitivities 24 times less, on average, than C. irroratus. Recalculation of the Puget Sound water-quality criterion for cyanide, by substituting the new Cancer spp. data for the C. irroratus data, results in water-quality criterion protecting marine life against acute and chronic toxicity of 9.4 and 2.9 g/L cyanide, compared to the U.S. EPA national value of 1.0 g/L for both acute and chronic toxicity.
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