Crowley receives 2005 Legacy Award from Pacific States/British Columbia Oil Spill Task Force for Oil Spill Prevention, Preparedness, and Response

The Pacific States/British Columbia Oil Spill Task Force will give its 2005 Legacy Awards for Oil Spill Prevention, Preparedness, and Response at its annual meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, on July 27th. This year’s Legacy Award winners are:

Crowley’s Marine Transport Lines Subsidiary
BP Shipping, Inc.
US Coast Guard Commander William Whitson
US Coast Guard District 11
Cholly Mercer, President, Rainier Petroleum Corporation.

Legacy Awards are given to industry, non-profit or public agency organizations and individuals, or for team efforts. The Task Force gives Legacy Awards for projects, accomplishments, or leadership that demonstrates innovation, management commitment and improvements in oil spill prevention, preparedness, or response resulting in enhanced environmental protection. Efforts to promote partnerships and involve the public are favored. Organizations, individuals, or projects nominated for the Legacy Award must be located in or operating in the Task Force jurisdictions of Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California and Hawaii. Organizations or individuals representing a regulated industry must demonstrate a satisfactory history of compliance with state, provincial, and federal oil spill regulations. Jean Cameron, executive coordinator for the Pacific States/British Columbia Oil Spill Task Force, characterizes the 2005 Legacy Award winners as clearly deserving of recognition for their investments, commitment, and innovation. More details on the 2005 Legacy Award winners follow:

Crowley’s Marine Transport Lines subsidiary will receive a 2005 Legacy Award in recognition of their outstanding commitment to safety and spill prevention. Crowley is the largest independent operator of petroleum barges and tankers in the United States. Crowley designed, built and operates an articulated tug-barge (ATB) fleet consisting of four Reliance class vessels, which have been in operation on the West Coast since 2002 and have delivered over 50,000,000 barrels of cargo with no spills.

The four new ATBs incorporate the latest advances in double-hull design; redundant propulsion and engineering systems; inert gas systems; vapor recovery; enhanced cargo management systems; and reduced emission electronic diesel engines. The communication and navigation equipment is among the most technologically advanced in the industry today. These ATBs exceed environmental regulatory requirements by being the first class of barges built, documented and maintained to the requirements of the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) SafeHull as well as meeting all Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) international standards. The Crowley ATBs use an innovative Intercon notch connection that significantly improves upon the conventional tow wire system; it has been proven for full ocean service and allows the tug and barge to move locked together at speeds up to 12 knots and in a Beaufort 5 sea condition.

Crowley has created an Environmental, Safety and Quality Assurance Management System to ensure operating excellence. The Management System is an integration of the ISO 9001 quality assurance program; the International Management Code for the Safe Operation of Ships and for Pollution Control (ISM Code); the American Waterways Operators (AWO) Responsible Carrier Program (RCP) and the ISO 14001 environmental management system. These environmental, safety, and quality programs are combined into a single Operational Excellence Management System. All of these international management system certifications exceed regulatory requirements. As an example of their commitment to spill prevention, Crowley has installed remote shutdowns that allow terminal operators to secure onboard barge cargo pumps from a dockside location to stop cargo operations in the event of an emergency.

Crowley’s stated safety vision is to be recognized as the global safety leader in the transportation industry. Their ongoing safety leadership training includes management and maritime union leaders and all ATB officers and crews. Crowley’s safety and environmental performance goals include zero injuries; zero damages and zero environmental spills as well as performance objectives such as job safety analyses; near miss reporting; Why Tree incident investigations; safety assessments; and effective safety meetings. Crowley conducts ongoing employee training and education on Crowley’s safety culture and environmental protection programs, and their partnership with the maritime unions is working on including the safety leadership training in their union training schools.

In addition, crewing levels on their ATBs exceed USCG requirements, and Crowley also utilizes an employee reward system, and corporate management keeps an open channel for feedback from employees and their union. This adds up to a team effort focused on spill prevention and vessel safety. The net result of all these efforts is that Crowley has set the model for operation of ATBs on the West Coast.

For more information about Crowley, visit www.crowley.com.

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