Comparative Costs of Low-Technology Shoreline Cleaning Methods1

Abstract

This paper examines the trends in costs associated with the various low technology shoreline cleanup methods that were used in the response to the Sea Empress incident, by drawing on information gathered during the response and the subsequent claims for compensation from the local government councils involved. Analysis of the costs allowed the level of effort invested in shoreline cleaning to be quantified and re-enforced the view that the return on effort invested decreases progressively as the level of oiling reduces. The trends also reflect occasions where additional effort had to be expended at a later stage in the cleanup as a consequence of problems generated by some techniques used earlier in the response.

In-depth analysis of accidental oil spills from tankers in the context of global spill trends from all sources

“…Very large spills are viewed as the most visible and dramatic causes of marine and coastal pollution as can be seen from their often exceptional media presence [13]. However, previous studies in many cases focused on particular aspects of oil spills such as the amount spilled and distributional trends (e.g., [14]), ecological consequences (e.g., [15,16]), economic costs of pollution (e.g., [5,17,18]), cleanup techniques (e.g., [19]) or examined specific geographical areas (e.g., [20,21]). …”

The economy of oil spills: Direct and indirect costs as a function of spill size

“…If spills were to occur in the German North Sea area in the new future, for instance, modelled response costs should be weighted against potential spill damages, which is a difference between modelled total spill costs and response costs. Cost effectiveness derived should then be taken as one of important considerations to determine whether a course of combat action is an improvement on doing nothing and allowing natural processes to take their course [32].…”

Risk based integrity modeling of offshore process components suffering stochastic degradation

“…6.1.3 Cost of spill cleanup. The cost of oil spill cleanup varies considerably from one incident to another, depending on a number of factors, such as, the type of oil, amount spilled and the rate of spillage, the characteristics of the affected area, weather and sea conditions, local and national laws, time of the year and the spill clean up strategy (White and Molloy, 2003;White, 2002;Etkin, 1999Etkin, , 2000Purnell, 1999). Predicting the per-unit cost of spill response is highly uncertain since the factors impacting the costs are quite complex (Etkin, 2000).…”

“…The cost due to loss of habitat and damage to natural (Etkin, 1999(Etkin, , 2000. The nature damage due to oil spillage includes loss of marine as well as coastal habitat, soil pollution, damage to agriculture land and adverse health impact (Etkin, 2000;Purnell, 1999). The per-unit cleanup cost of nature damage is $5,086 per ton of oil (for a shoreline length of 1 km), based on Etkin (2000).…”