US ports, industry brace for ‘smart’ security rules
  from: Offshore Engineer
  by: Russell McCulley
  Thursday, October 02, 2008

Next month, federal guidelines designed to protect US ports from acts of terrorism will kick into high gear as the first of some 1.2 million workers will be required to present a Transportation Worker Identification Credential, or TWIC, to gain access to secure sites at ports, aboard vessels and at some offshore facilities. OE’s Gulf of Mexico editor Russell McCulley looks at how the new rules are affecting the industry, and why some say TWIC will make it harder to attract and retain employees.

While most everyone agrees with the goal underlying the new TWIC regulations – to prevent an act of terrorism against US ports or the vessels and installations they serve – there is widespread grumbling in the oil patch about the means the government has devised to achieve it. At the heart of the debate is language in the regulations that many say is expansive and ambiguous, and could make it difficult for some employees who pose no terrorism risk to obtain the cards. Questions remain among many in the industry about how the guidelines will be enforced, and just how far vessel and platform owners must go to ensure compliance.

‘We’ve been strong critics of this thing for quite some time,’ says Ken Wells, president of the Offshore Marine Service Association, a trade organization representing owners and operators of USflagged vessels that support the offshore energy sector. Mariners are already required to carry the Merchant Marine Document and submit to a full vetting by the US Coast Guard, he says. ‘Our mariners are already operating at one of the highest levels of security in the transportation industry. So to say they need a TWIC card to be upstanding Americans makes no sense.’

Between 15 October 2008 and mid-April 2009, an estimated 1.2 million transportation workers – including merchant mariners, port employees and others who routinely need access to secure areas of vessels and facilities – will be expected to carry the TWIC ‘smart card’ containing biometric data and other identification information. The regulations grew out of the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002, passed in the wake of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. Good for five years after issue, the cards carry a $132.50 processing fee and require applicants to supply extensive personal information, including criminal history; certain felony offences incurred during the previous seven years, or jail time served during the previous five years, could automatically disqualify a candidate.

Critics say that, while few oilfield applicants have felonies that would disqualify them, the broad language governing the nonviolent crimes of drug trafficking and fraud – which together account for nearly a third of all state felony convictions, and can cover a wide range of crimes, including relatively minor offences – would unnecessarily flag many good workers who pose no true security risk to the US and discourage others from seeking employment in an industry struggling to attract and retain employees.

Jonathan Allan, a spokesperson for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which oversees the TWIC program, says those fears are unwarranted. ‘Our intent is to keep people who pose a threat away from the ports, not to keep people from going to their jobs,’ he says.

But others have voiced concerns about the statute’s broad language. ‘The magnitude of the TWIC disqualifying offences raises the serious question whether TSA’s proposed regulations are carefully tailored to screen for a legitimate “terrorism security risk” or whether they are so unnecessarily expansive as to prove mostly ineffective,’ the National Employment Law Project (NELP), a nonprofit group that advocates for low-wage workers, said in a 2006 statement to the TSA and Coast Guard.

NELP staff attorney Laura Moskowitz says that although the TSA has established a waiver and appeals process for those who receive an initial TWIC rejection, many may not be aware that they have recourse if their credentials are denied. ‘Word on the street is that if you have a felony, you need not apply, when in fact there is a waiver process,’ she says. ‘Our main concern, with respect to the criminal background check, is that people may not be aware’ of the TSA’s waiver and appeals options. ‘We are concerned that these folks might fall through the cracks.’

Of the 426,654 TWIC applications filed by early August, TSA had printed 383,598 identification cards and activated 246,970. The agency had sent out 11,587 initial disqualification letters, according to TSA records; of those, 5046 appeals were filed and 3588 granted. TSA had also received 716 waiver requests and granted 485. Of the appeals or waiver requests that had been processed, only 30 disqualifications were upheld.

Applicants may appeal a disqualification if they believe the decision was made in error or may seek a waiver if they have a felony but can submit documents supporting their case from a parole or probation officer or an employer.Waivers may also be sought by employees who are aliens with temporary protected status.

For most offshore energy workers, qualifying for TWIC is little more than a minor inconvenience. ‘The quality of our licensed and documented crews is pretty high. They’ve undergone background checks, physical fitness tests and more,’ Wells says. But a number of lower-paying and entry level maritime jobs don’t require that kind of scrutiny, he says. ‘It’s going to be even harder for certain sectors of the maritime industry to hire and retain people.’

Allan says applicants who believe they may have trouble obtaining credentials should apply early and start lining up whatever supporting documents they may need in the event of a denial. ‘For someone who may have issues, we urge them to apply as soon as possible,’ he says.

Even those who don’t expect any problems are being encouraged to apply quickly, before the staggered deadlines for compliance start to kick in next month. Mariners at Louisiana-based Superior Energy have waited a minimum of six weeks, and sometimes as much as three months, to receive their TWICs, says Sanders Derise, general manager of the company’s HSE division. ‘We’ve been in the process for over a year – as soon as we could get to the enrollment center – and we’re about 90 to 95% completed,’ he says. Like many other companies, Superior is covering employees’ TWIC costs.

Derise says the program has had little effect on Superior’s ability to find employees. ‘We’re not feeling it so much on the marine side,’ he says. ‘But for some manual labor jobs, it will definitely limit the workforce.’ For now, the company will bring on promising employees even if their TWIC status is pending. ‘We will hire a guy without a TWIC card and put him through the process,’ he says; in the meantime, ‘he’ll have to be escorted (to secure areas) by someone who does have one.’

A more pressing concern, Derise and others say, is the apparent lack of a clear enforcement plan from the Coast Guard. Vessel operators will be required to perform a visual scan of the cards for workers who need access to secure areas, and the agency has announced that officers will use hand-held electronic readers for on-site inspections of vessels and offshore facilities. Less clear is whether some vessels and platforms will be required to install expensive permanent electronic card readers.

‘We are unalterably opposed to having scanners on our vessels,’ says OMSA’s Wells. ‘The only area of our vessels that could be a security risk is the wheelhouse, and there’s always a security officer there.’

Commander David Murk, the Coast Guard’s TWIC coordinator, says the federal government is still reviewing bids for the hand-held readers; once a manufacturer is selected, the program will enter a testing and training period before the Coast Guard takes shipment of the devices. Still, he says, ‘the goal is to get them out as soon as we can.’

The Maritime Transportation Security Act covers some 3500 facilities, Murk says. It is not yet clear how many, if not all, of them will be required to have readers installed onsite. For now, the TWIC will serve as a ‘flash pass’, he says, which officials can examine visually to see if the card matches its bearer and that it has no signs of tampering. ‘The need for readers is just a proposal for now,’ he says.

Despite lingering questions, the industry is pushing to get employees armed with TWICs before an anticipated lastminute crush of applications hits the TSA’s enrollment centers.

The Coast Guard has already extended compliance dates by several months. But many are still concerned about the program’s ability to keep up with demand as deadlines near.

‘The process is taking longer than it should, and the enrollment centers still have glitches that they have to work out,’ says Wells. ‘But the main problem is the huge number of people out there who don’t know they need a TWIC.’ OE

Dates, centers, schedule, web links
The Transportation Security Administration has established 147 TWIC enrollment centers in the US and other parts of the world; additionally, the agency will conduct registrations in more remote areas with mobile enrollment centers. TSA contracted with Lockheed Martin to staff the centers and process applications. Applicants must file for a TWIC in person – and by appointment only – but can save time by pre-registering online at the TWIC web site, http://www.tsa.gov/what_we_do/layers/twic/index.shtm. The site also has detailed information about the criteria used to deny applications and what steps an applicant can take to appeal a rejection.

The Coast Guard has set a series of dates between mid-October 2008 and mid- April 2009 for Captains of the Port in the US and its territories to comply with the new TWIC regulations. New England ports are scheduled for earliest compliance, with New York, Houston/Galveston and Los Angeles/Long Beach among the last batch of ports to fully adopt the new rules. A complete list of ports and compliance dates is available on the Coast Guard’s web site at http://homeport.uscg.mil

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