Oil Spill Prevention Program

Our goal is to prevent any spills from occurring. U.S. Oil utilizes rigorous maintenance and work practices, safety-conscious design, job-specific employee training, and detailed incident investigation procedures to minimize the risk of an oil spill.

Spill Drills

In the unlikely event that an accidental release should occur, we have strategic response plans in place and personnel dedicated to emergency response and remediation to ensure that any release is quickly addressed and mitigated. The following are just a few examples of the elements of our oil spill program:

• U.S. Oil established the practice of pre-booming all oil transfers at our marine terminal over 30 years ago; long before this practice was mandated by the Washington State legislature in 2006. As allowed by Ecology regulations, U.S. Oil's pre-booming practices were modified during 2009 to exclude gasoline and gasoline blendstock only cargo transfers due to potential fire safety concerns.
• Further prevention efforts are supported by U.S. Oil's API 653 tank inspection program and API 570 program for inspecting all underground pipelines in petroleum hydrocarbon service. During 2007, U.S. Oil replaced all of the refinery-to-dockline pipelines using state-of-the-art construction materials and control systems.
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  Spill Response equipment
  U.S. Oil routinely participates in both scheduled and unannounced annual tabletop and equipment deployment spill drills to meet Washington Department of Ecology spill drill requirements, which are among the most stringent in the United States. During recent tabletop spill drills, we have partnered with the Washington Department of Ecology, EPA Region 10, U.S. Coast Guard, US DOT Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration as well as other local emergency response organizations to demonstrate our continued ability to respond to oil spills.
• U.S. Oil has access to state-of-the-art oil spill response equipment both within the Puget Sound region as well as other United States coastal regions through our membership with MSRC. U.S. Oil has been a member of MSRC since it merged with its predecessor, Clean Sound in 2005. U.S. Oil was previously a charter member of Clean Sound since it's inception in 1971.