Marine Enviroment Protection New technologies on oil spill response industry

The number of oil spills from tankers has decreased dramatically over the last 25 years although seaborne oil trade increased significantly. However recovery and cleaning rates of oil pollution did not show a marked improvement through this period. The effectiveness of response operations which has a close relationship with technology, infrastructure, and personnel are only measured with quantity of oil recovered and the area cleaned. There are so many response techniques have proven their success in laboratory and controlled field experiments in marine conditions. There is wide range of challenges encountered when recovering of oil such as old technology, distance, lack of infrastructure, and moderate environmental conditions in marine environment. Equipment, vessels and personnel would need to be mobilized over potentially vast distances to overcome these challenges. Time is one of the most important variables which have direct effect on the response operation. Reducing risk and time losses can be provided with new technologic infrastructure. In this study the limitations of the various response techniques are summarized. Then the factors that determine the seriousness of marine oil spills and the fundamental technical difficulties of combating them at-sea are discussed. Within this scope the relationship between technological developments of infrastructure and effectiveness of oil spill response operations are mentioned.