portation, deployment and clean-up and maintenance required for the use will be borne by the user. At normal times, PAJ will store the materials and equipment in the condition ready to be used at anytime by having maintenance conducted by contractors. It is the concept of PAJ to offer an access to the supplementary equipment when in need. The concerned party signs the contract upon confirming the conditions and terms according to the “Agreement for lending oil spill response equipment”. Agreement is concluded after the borrower submits the “request for lending” to PAJ and receives “approval notice” from PAJ. PAJ will then give instructions to the appropriate base to lend and prepare for the shipment of the requested equipment. It is the general rule for the borrower to come to the base and be responsible for the shipment of the equipment. However, judging from the urgency and convenience of the case, PAJ will make arrangements for the transportation of the equipment on behalf of the borrower upon request to be transported to the place designated by the borrower.
This is the way the system is set up. However, since few people own similar equipment in Japan, it is one of our biggest concerns that few people can operate the equipment when we lend them. In the case of NAKHODKA incident and the previous SEA PRINCE incident, we have experienced the problem of lack of personnel with the ability to operate the equipment. Nurturing human resources is time-consuming and though we recognize the need, the reality is that we are only making a slow progress concerning this matter.
PAJ is, slowly but surely, continuing to conduct exercise and training programs in order to solve the problem.
There are 2 types of exercise programs:
One type is where PAJ base is the core and the PAJ's maintenance contractor independently conducts drills on the assumption of an emergency, or conducts drills jointly with the person in charge of disaster prevention in PAJ member companies, or conducts drills jointly with PAJ Oil Spill Cooperative Organization (POSCO).
The other type is where PAJ conducts a joint drill with organizations other than member companies, such as Maritime Safety Agency (MSA), Maritime Disaster Prevention Center (MDPC) and port and harbor authorities where the overseas equipment bases are located, or where PAJ participates in the drills conducted by these organizations.
PAJ also provides training programs to increase the number of personnel who can operate OSR equipment. It is called “Training Course for Actual Operation of Equipment”, a 2-day training course offered at 6 OSR bases in Japan. The program consists of the following; half-a-day spent on lectures about the mechanism and system of the equipment and one-and-a-half day spent on hands-on training of the operation of the equipment and review of the training course.
Participants of the training course is mainly people from PAJ member companies and oil-transportation-related companies. The number of trainees is limited to about 20 people. We think that this number is appropriate for achieving the goal, which is to have all the participants be able to operate the equipment.
The lecturers of the training program are, at present, members of POSCO oil spill response committee. Instructors of the hands-on training are supervisors of the maintenance work contractors.
Now, I would like to introduce the examples of cases which we have lent OSR equipment.
Table 4 lists the major cases which we lent OSR equipment. First of all, as I mentioned previously, the SEA PRINCE incident which occurred in the summer of 1995 at Yosu, Korea. In this case, we transported 7 containers from Mizushima base in the Seto Inland Sea to Pusan with Kanpu ferry and from Pusan to Yosu with trucks. There was a request to provide personnel with the equipment, but we could neither provide operators nor people who could supervise the operation.
In December 1996, the Dong You incident which was a Chinese freighter going aground off Okushiri Island in Hokkaido occurred. This year in January, the NAKHODKA incident occurred. In April, the OH SUNG No.3 incident occurred at Tsushima. In July, the DIAMOND GRACE incident occurred. Though, it was often, we lent equipment for all the incidents.
I would like to look at the case of the NAKHODKA incident. Table 5 shows what and how much equipment we lent and what the lent ratio was to stocks. Table 6 shows the status quo of the stock for each base in Japan.
As was explained yesterday, the NAKHODKA spill polluted an extremely long coastline. Therefore, there were requests for borrowing OSR equipment from many local governments as well as the owner of the ship.
What can be said when the table is related to reality is that the rate of actual use is not as high as the lent ratio.
