This training was requested by Guyana through the Pacific Disaster Center of U.S. Southern Command and coordinated through NOAA’s Office of International Affairs. Twenty-nine participants attended the online training from various governmental agencies and with a variety of roles and responsibilities for oil spill response and contingency planning. 

The request from Guyana was to provide several elements of oil spill response and planning that would allow the government of Guyana to be better prepared for oil spills along its coast and add knowledge and capability in advance of a major oil spill exercise, known as Tradewinds, scheduled to be held in Guyana this month. 

The training provided by OR&R focused on shoreline assessments following a spill, to include understanding of shoreline and habitat types and their associated sensitivity to oil, field data collection, and data processing designed to establish scale, priorities, and progress-tracking to aid operational decision-making. 

NOAA job aids and manuals were provided to the participants to help guide them through the assessment process, evaluate best cleanup options, and understand tradeoffs and cleanup endpoints and how to select them.

This is the second consecutive year that OR&R has provided this course for Guyana, and Guyana is interested in continuing a relationship with NOAA for additional training and refreshers on an annual basis. 

Currently, there is another training for Guyana being coordinated through OR&R’s Emergency Response Division, in oil spill trajectory analysis.