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§ 20 Coordination of offshore emergency preparedness

The operator shall ensure that emergency preparedness is coordinated when more than one facility or vessel are used simultaneously.
The operator's emergency preparedness measures shall be designed for coordination with public emergency preparedness resources.
The operator shall lead and coordinate the use of emergency preparedness resources in the event of hazard and accident situations, until a public authority assumes this responsibility, if applicable.
The Norwegian Ocean Industry Authority and the Norwegian Environment Agency can, within their respective jurisdictions, stipulate a requirement that standby vessels, including aircraft, shall be stationed at facilities or vessels participating in the petroleum activities. Requirements can be stipulated as regards the functions that a standby vessel shall be able to perform.
Section last changed: 01 July 2013

The operator and other participants in the petroleum activities (the responsible party) shall establish and further develop emergency preparedness. The emergency preparedness shall include measures in response to identified hazard and accident situations.
The requirement for managing and coordinating in the third subsection follows from Section 9-2 of the Petroleum Act, and entails that the operator is responsible for seeing to it that necessary measures are implemented to prevent or reduce the detrimental effect of a hazard and accident situation. If parts of the emergency preparedness are safeguarded by other players on behalf of the operator, the operator is, however, still responsible for emergency preparedness as described in the third subsection.
With regard to emergency preparedness against acute pollution, the requirement in the second sub-section means that the operator must ensure that their emergency response measures are suitable to be coordinated with the Norwegian Coastal Administration's emergency resources. As the pollution control authority, the Norwegian Coastal Administration is responsible for a national emergency response system against acute pollution, cf. Section 43, third subsection, of the Pollution Control Act. Coordination of emergency measures with the Norwegian Coastal Administration includes, among other things, plans (which also highlight the Norwegian Coastal Administration's role in state takeover of the management of operations), equipment, joint training and competence. In order to ensure that this is satisfactorily addressed, a dialogue between the operator and the Norwegian Coastal Administration is necessary.
The Norwegian Coastal Administration supervises the responsible party's handling of an acute pollution incident. The Norwegian Coastal Administration can also advise and provide assistance. In the event of major cases of acute pollution, the Norwegian Coastal Administration may take over the management of combating the pollution. A state takeover will be organized in line with the “Bridging document; Establishing a unified command for acute pollution by government in response to extreme pollution incidents which the petroleum industry is responsible for”, Version 3, February 2019. The bridging document has been prepared in collaboration with the Norwegian Oil and Gas Association