American Petroleum Institute

Proceedings 1989 Oil Spill Conference Prevention, Behavior, Control, Cleanup
 N PUBL 4479

Annotation

FOREWORD: The first Oil Spill Conference was held in New York in December 1969. It was jointly sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute and the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration (FWPCA), predecessor of the Environmental Protection Agency. That conference attracted an international audience of 1,100 to hear 41 technical papers, several of which dealt with the Santa Barbara oil spill which occurred in January of that year. The goals of the first conference were "to delineate the overall dimensions of the oil spills problem, explore the present state of the art of prevention and control of oil spills, and review the relevant research and development efforts of government and private industry, both here and abroad."

The 1989 Oil Spa Conference celebrates the 20th anniversary of that first conference. Although academic research is widely recognized as having contributed equally with government and industry research, the goals of the 1989 conference remain largely as stated in 1969. However, both the state of knowledge and overall spill preparedness are vastly different from what they were 20 years ago. The Oil Spill Conference has become the major forum for sharing this information, and the Conference Proceedings volumes are critical references for anyone working in the field.

The current sponsors-the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Coast Guard, and American Petroleum Institute-are proud of the part the Conference has played in the progress on all aspects of the oil spill problem over the past 20 years. We also recognize that our work is not yet complete. For example, spill cleanup methods that increase, rather than minimize, the environmental impacts of spills are still occasionally used in areas that contain sensitive habitats. We need to reach a consensus about those habitats for which ecological considerations are to be primary and, similarly, those where esthetic considerations will prevail. In addition, further work is needed to improve our response capability for inland spills.