teachers, bus drivers, whatever. But we have calculated, and if we can get five of them, we'll be happy. But most of the time, all ten showed up, actually. It's the same thing with the coastal tankers; there will always be one empty. They are not loaded all the time-they are going from the refinery, they are discharging, going back. But of course, you could be very unlucky, and then you could not use them. But at the same time, we also have an agreement with fishing vessels which can carry 1,000 t (1,200 m3 of oil in their tanks, so we can bring them in. That's one option. And we always will have supply vessels that can carry about the same amount. We can bring them in. So as I said, we are depending on the vessels of opportunity, actually.
Davies: I was interested to hear about the technique you mentioned at the end-is it spreading pine bark on the oil? Could you elaborate on that slightly, please?
Nerland: Yes, this is the brown stuff you see. That's the pine bark. We have been using that for many years, actually, not only on the beach-you can see here a beach with boulders and stones- but also on grass. Because it stays there for a while, and then it turns into compost. We have been back in this area after a couple of years, and saw everything is green and nice, and cows are there. But of course, you had better to take away as much as you can of the oil before you do that. But we've been using this for many, many years. And we have stocks of that actually.
Davies: It doesn't refloat?
Nerland: Well, of course it does. But there's not much oil on those stones. So, you take off the rest, then it will refloat eventually, but still it will go away from there. And then when it comes out, the oil will be washed out, so if it drifts back on shore in another place, we have experience that it doesn't really matter.
Lessard: I'm curious about your physical dispersion. At least in my experience, that varies widely with the type of oil that you are dealing with. Obviously in the BRAER, that completely dispersed, but in the VALDEZ, as I mentioned, the Alaskan North Slope Crude was exposed to very violent conditions in the storm, and yet the percentage that was physically dispersed was very low, and it sounds like in the NAKHODKA spill as well that even though the seas were 6 to 8 m, it still managed to coat 800 km of shoreline. So I'm really wondering if you have done some kind of study in Norway that we could benefit from, because this is an issue that's been raised by the Germans as well. We get the same argument in Holland as well that you don t need chemicals because it's going to physically disperse. That seems to vary very much around the world, and I think it's because of the type of crude. But I'd like your experience on that.
Nerland: Well, you're probably right. I'm not an expert on this, but Mr.Rφdal knows more about this than I do, so I think he will mention this tomorrow.
Kudo: I understand that even for those vessels calling on Norwegian ports, it is not madatory to have an advance contract with the contractors, like NOFO. For the shipowners or shipping companies who have met with incidents or accidents, even though they might have large pockets in terms of funding and money, I believe it may take time to actually contract the contractors in Norway to operate. As there may be no time to lose, the Norwegian government would have to make an immediate decision, perhaps on their own account, to do the operation. Is that right? Of course, I understand that they will be posting the bills to the spillers later on. But in the case of foreign vessels, don't you find any troubles with foreign shipowners in terms of contract terms and so forth?
Nerland: It's always a problem to get the money. But, I think Mr. Schive can explain, this is a political thing. As it is now, it is the government that has to respond. Whether that will be changed, I don't know, but as it is now, the government has to respond. If the ship is aground, at least you have the polluter there, and you can always get hold of his insurance company and maybe the owner, you never know. In the case of ARISAN, I don't know how long we spent before we found the owner, but we finally found him. This happened in 1992, and I think the last bill was paid last year. So it takes some time. But maybe Mr. Schive could explain something about that.
Schive: I would like to confirm that it's our policy that the state will immediately enter into action if an oil spill occurs. We found it very important to act immediately and not rely on any different organization to come in and start a debate about how the action should be performed and so on. We'll take action first, and then deal with problems which may arise later. This also will have to do with the kind of picture of traffic that is in Norwegian water. I think our picture of traffic in Norwegian water is quite different from for instance the one that is faced within the United States. It's more diffuse related to what kind of ships are in our waters, compared to the United States, for instance. Thank you.
