It is true that the spilt oil drifted along many km of the coastline. However, a great quantity of equipment was lent because the NAKHODKA incident was a major maritime incident, the first time in 25 years, and the borrowers requested for the equipment as prevention measures. In the future, when orders, instructions and decisions concerning response method are unified, there may not be a need to lend this much of equipment.
Along with the lending of the equipment, for 3 months from January after the occurrence of the incident to end of March, over 400 man-days of equipment supervisors were dispatched upon request from PAJ and 6 bases in Japan, domestic and foreign equipment manufacturers and equipment import agencies to give instructions for operating the equipment. Nonetheless, sufficient supervising was not performed because the polluted coastline was of great distance and there were many drifted-oil recovery points.
Next, I would like to introduce some pictures. This picture shows the bow of NAKHODKA which had drifted to Mikunicho, Fukui Prefecture and the solid boom spread out around the bow to prevent spilt oil from the bow drifting offshore.
The next picture is one of the scenes of the equipment transportation. The equipment was transported from all over Japan. Since transporting from Hokkaido would take too much time, it was decided that Self-Defense Force (SDF)'s C-130 would be used. This picture was taken when the equipment was being loaded at Chitose Airport to be transported to Komatsu Airport.
This picture shows SDF personnel using PAJ's oil skimmer. The place is the coastline in Mikunicho. Here, the water was so shallow that the float of the oil skimmer could not be used. The SDF personnel was the one who worked on the rocky, dangerous places as is shown in this picture. At the bottom of the cliff, which is about 10 m in height, the float of the oil skimmer was removed so that it could be used as a pump to transfer the oil which was recovered in a hopper manually. This picture shows the transfer.
Oil which was recovered from the surface of the sea and coastline was stored as a temporary measure in a large pit made in haste at the pier of Fukui Port. The stored oil had to be transferred to the waste treatment site with a vessel. The pump of the oil skimmer was used to transfer the recovered oil/debris mixture from the pit to a vessel. Since the recovered oil contained a lot of seaweed, ropes and other debris, we made a basket like the one shown in the picture. The transfer to the vessel was made by putting the pump in the basket and dropping the basket inside the pit. However, a great amount of seaweed and other debris would get stuck in the pump. We had to repeatedly disassemble and clean the pump.
This picture shows a provisional storage pit made out of steel plates, which was also filled with oil. Recovered oil was transferred from the pit to a crane barge which was anchored close-by using the pump of an oil skimmer put in a basket. After the pit was emptied, the pit was used to wash the lent material and equipment. FASTANK (portable tank) which was placed near-by was filled with fresh water used to do the final wash-up.
In March, most of the lent materials and equipment was returned and placed at the pier of Fukui Port. As one can see in the picture, all of the materials and equipment is stored in a container. The containers can be loaded on a truck or an aircraft so that they can be transported anywhere. The spacious pier enabled us to spread out the 250m- long inflatable boom and check for any tear or contamination.
On April 20th, the wrecked bow section was lifted out of the sea and transferred to inspection/treatment site. The foreign object was removed from the coast of Mikuni-cho.
The next picture shows the SEA PRINCE incident which occurred in Korea. This was taken in the beginning of August from a helicopter. There was evidence of an explosion in the engine room. Even 2 weeks after the occurrence of the incident when the picture was taken, one could see black streaks of oil on the surface of the sea. In this case, the crew of EARL (East Asia Response Ltd.) was despatched with C-130 from Singapore and oil dispersant was sprayed offshore.
PAJ's materials and equipment was transported from Moji to Pusan, Korea by ferry and loaded onto 2 barges, making 2 units. Each barge or unit consisted of booms and oil skimmers. A small tanker was moored beside the barge and the boom was spread out. The recovery system of operating the oil skimmer and collecting in the tanker was taken.
However, by the time this system reached the incident site, not much oil was offshore, but oil had drifted to the shoal. Therefore, beach cleaners were used instead to recover oil. Approximately 700 t of oil was recovered over a period of 1 month. This was the first case that PAJ had lent materials and equipment overseas.
Besides the aforementioned cases, we had materials and equipment on stand-by to transport them by aircraft from the domestic bases for the Maersk Navigator incident which occurred in January 1993. It ended on stand-by.
In March 1994, when the Seki collision incident occurred off Fujairah of the Arabian Peninsula, materials and equipment stockpiled at Al-Khafji base in Saudi Arabia was put on stand-by to be transported to Fujairah. If we had actually transported the equipment, there may have been some trouble with the customs procedure. In any case, we did not actually transport the equipment.
Therefore, the major incidents which PAJ lent equipment were SEA PRINCE incident, NAKHODKA incident and DIAMOND GRACE incident which occurred in July. At first, we had heard that DIAMOND GRACE had spilt 15,000 kL of oil and we thought we would be spending many sleepless nights. Fortunately the quantity was much smaller than anticipated and we were able to withdraw the lent equipment soon.
Now, everything is calm and quiet. My wish is that it remains this way.
This concludes my explanation.
