Philip Myers: About the Author
Chevron Texaco

The purpose of the new SPCC rule is two-fold; i.e. to prevent oil spills from occurring and to respond to them if they do occur. We believe that few will argue that prevention is far better and less costly than response in general. The focus of this paper is to highlight how the new SPCC invokes existing industry standards as a requirement for implementation at all covered facilities in an effort to prevent spills. In particular, we focus on the most important industry standards that are required to prevent spills from occurring in existing facilities. Since the SPCC rule does not specifically identify any required standards the task of figuring out which standards are applicable and must be implemented is a challenging one. There are at least a hundred industry standards related to tanks and terminal facilities.

One of the most important steps involved with regard to tank inspection, using API Standard 653, is establishing the internal inspection interval. API 653 says, "Section 6.4.1.1 Internal inspection is primarily required to: a. Ensure that the bottom is not severely corroded and leaking. b. Gather the data necessary for the minimum bottom and shell thickness 1 assessments detailed in Section 6. As applicable, these data shall also take into account external ultrasonic measurements made during in-service inspections (see 6.3.3).........."