There is limited space available for Monday workshops. If you are interested in organizing a workshop, please send the following information to the conference planners:
We will accept workshop requests on a first-come, first-served basis as long as space is available.
This page will be updated as workshops are added, so please check back later.
Oil Spill Preparedness and Response Workshop: Tradeoff Decisions in the Gulf of MexicoMonday, February 4Organized by Coastal Waters Consortium
US regional policies were developed in the 1990s following the Ixtoc I blowout in the Gulf of Mexico (3 June 1979 – 23 March 1980), the Exxon Valdez oil spill (March 24, 1989), the passage of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90), and the 1994 update of the US National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan (NCP). The NCP requires the development of regional policies about the use of dispersants, other chemicals and in-situ burning. In many regional policies, dispersant use was authorized as a viable response option to mitigate the impacts of oil on vulnerable/sensitive/productive coastal environments (especially marshes) and water surface wildlife (especially birds), when applied in open waters with good circulation and potential for rapid dispersed oil dilution, e.g., > 3 miles from shore and > 30 feet.
The goal of this workshop is to begin a conversation between GOMRI researchers and their user community, i.e., oil spill planners and responders, about applying past and recent scientific findings to produce shared knowledge that will help inform tradeoff decisions during oil spill planning and response in the Gulf of Mexico. The scenario will involve a blowout that threatens the coast, with choices about response options that include dispersant use.
Responding to Future Deep Water Oil Spills in the Gulf of Mexico Monday, February 4Organized by C-IMAGE
Research stemming from the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill has resulted in a considerable body of work specific to ambient conditions at that 1,500 m deep site in the northern Gulf of Mexico (GoM). Should another mega-blowout occur in the GoM, it surely will occur at sites deeper and more remote to the coast, as the industry has moved to well locations in depths approaching 3,000 m. Data mined from the BOEM website is used to forecast how exploration and production has and will evolve over time. Using simulations of deep blowout scenarios combined with accumulated information on realistic processes extant at various sites as well as resources potentially at risk, this session considers how future scenarios may differ from DWH. The DWH scenario resulted in a considerable quantity of oil reaching the bottom as a result of marine oil snow aggregation processes. Will the conditions required for such a scenario be achieved farther offshore and away from riverine sources of clay particles and in areas of lower primary productivity? How will future spills impact the exclusive economic zones of the three Gulf countries? In particular, the use of mitigation measures such as traditional clean up technologies (booming, straining, controlled burns, surface-applied dispersants, and mitigation measures novel to DWH (SSDI, berming, freshwater releases) will be considered. This workshop will also highlight the relative environmental sensitivity of offshore Gulf regions, critical information gaps, and policy implications of offshore spill scenarios.