About ITAC

The Industry Technical Advisory Committee (ITAC) is non-commercial and is driven by OSRL as part of our advocacy programme, recognising the benefits of engaging our front-line response staff in industry-focused technical discussion central to developing more effective oil spill response. We hold an ITAC meeting once per year, hosted in different locations with the meeting chaired by different ITAC members. We try to blend both international themes with items of regional interest according to where the meeting is being held. 

ITAC attendees

ITAC’s membership comprises oil industry (i.e. members of OSRL and other GRN OSROs) international organizations (ITOPF, IMO, IOPC, etc.), Governmental organizations (USCG, NOAA, etc.), R&D institutes (SINTEF, CEDRE, GoMRI, etc.).  It also includes academic institutes involved in industry backed studies, and other organizations with a non-commercial interest in improving oil spill response. 

The connection with academia is an important feature of the ITAC model recognising that industry is a big financial supporter of university-based research but sometimes there has been a disconnect with the sharing of knowledge and outputs from these studies with “industry” which ITAC tries to address.

The story so far

ITAC is a technical forum which was established in 1996 to address oil spill response (OSR) issues of interest to its member organizations and the wider response community. ITAC projects sought to provide advice, technical support, good-practice guidelines and benchmarking on key issues such as new technological developments in oil spill response techniques, training and response capabilities. 

ITAC has evolved over last twenty years and his model has changed in recent times. Recognising that much of the delivery industry technical outputs is now being channelled through the IOGP/IPIECA JIP and the API projects in the US.  ITAC has now been cast in the role of supporting outreach and communication for those industry technical outputs to reach a broader church of stakeholders in the wider oil spill community.  As such ITAC no longer “delivers” tangible work items but now offers a forum for knowledge sharing and information exchange.

Click here for more information about ITAC

Join us at ITAC LinkedIn group