John Elliott has been ORCA’s Senior Technical Adviser since 2004.  From 1989 until 1996 he was engaged full time on oil spill related matters with the Federal Department of Transport and later AMSA.

During his tenure with first the Department and later the Authority’s marine pollution unit he was responsible for a range of matters associated with AMSA’s then significant level of equipment holdings.

Mr Elliott reviewed and revised the Environment Protection Group’s technical documentation on joining the Group in 1989.  He then drafted numerous technical specifications for the procurement of oil spill clean-up equipment by AMSA and was an integral member of the small team involved in the largest ever purchase of spill response equipment by AMSA following the review of Australia’s National Plan in the early 1990’s. Mr Elliott also provided support to the New Zealand Maritime Safety Authority (now Maritime New Zealand) by drafting technical specifications to facilitate the Authority’s procurement of oil spill response equipment.

Mr Elliott provided technical support to the AMSA training program by demonstrating to equipment operators the correct and safe use of oil spill response equipment and he assisted New Zealand authorities train their oil spill response equipment operators. He participated in a number of oil spill response exercises as a technical referee, including major exercises such as the National Plan’s biennial exercise program.

He was involved in a number of major oil spill response operations in Australia and a major oil spill overseas in Singapore. In Australia his roles included ensuring that equipment was operational and ready for immediate use and that other personnel were competent to use specialist spill response equipment. Mr Elliott with a number of other AMSA marine pollution unit personnel participated in ship-to-ship operations onboard the damaged tanker MT Kirki where they deployed and operated AMSA’s ship-to-ship transfer pumps at sea over a ten-day period.

Mr Elliott has extensive experience in preparing standard operating procedures for a significant range of oil spill response equipment and developing, updating and amending equipment manuals and other technical and operational documentation.

Mr Elliott has a professional association with the American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM). He is a Participating Member of the F20 Committee on Hazardous Substances and Oil Spill Response with voting rights on the various sub-committees. Matters that he has voted on include health and safety training of oil spill responders, developing a hazardous materials training curriculum for initial response personnel, standard guide for describing shoreline response techniques and a standard guide for terminology and indices to describe oil conditions on shorelines.

John is a member of ORCA’s oil spill response Incident Management Team (IMT) that is available nationwide to provide support to government and industry agencies affected by a major oil spill.