Chairman's Report : Chairman Motora
This time we had planned an intenational symposium with a purpose of learning lessons from the NAKHODKA oil-spill incident, and also to learn from the experiences of the past major oil-spill incidents in other countries from those experts who have been involved directly in those oil-spill responses, so that we will be able to be given guidance and advice that will be useful in preparing response in future oil-spill incidents.
We heard very enlightening comments and speeches from the guest speakers from many countries, and had very active and intensive discussion among the guest speakers. So, I feel the symposium was very useful and valuable for us indeed.
I will not have time to cover all the valuable points made at this symposium, but allow me to share with you my own impressions of this symposium. :
1) Initial action in any oil-spill response is crucial. You need to try very promptly to deal with the situation. Therefore, you need to firmly establish a contingency plan at all the levels, and try to establish a cooperative liaison system amongst all the responders and the different levels.
2) In oil-spill-response activities, you need to make quick decisions under uncertain situations; therefore you need very prompt provision of information. And such information obtained should be shared by all the responders. When an incident occurs in international waters, for the wrecked ship, we need to have information quickly notified from the flag country, from the ship owners, as well the operators. I believe we need to make this obligatory through international agreement or something of the like.
3) We need to have unified response approach. This, I believe, is an especially acute problem for Japan, because we don't have much interdepartmental communication in Japan. We need to unify and integrate our efforts.
4) It is necessary to appoint an on-scene commander or coordinator, and to delegate the power in order to make the necessary decisions.
5) As for performance of the mechanical-recovery units, especially under very bad weather, NOFO has been conducting oil-on-water tests, so their assessment is indeed invaluable. There are many noteworthy points in their assessments on performance. At a significant wave height of 2.5 meters and current speed of up to one meter, that kind of recovery is quite feasible, according to the data provided, which is quite encouraging to us.
This is just my personal view. In Japan, under the law, we are forbidden to conduct real oil-on-water experiments on the sea. But, in the NAKHODKA incident, is still leaking. 3 to 14 kiloliters of oil from the main body of the NAKHODKA. If we can utilize this opportunity for training purposes or to improve the mechanical-recovery units or to confirm the effect of dispersants, then we can get something good out of the bad experience.
6) According to the experience of the SEA EMPRESS incident, it is said that out of the oil spilled into the sea, 40% evaporated, 2% was mechanically recovered offshore, 2% was recovered on-shore, and 5% was residual on-shore. Natural dispersion was 14%. And through application of dispersants, 37% was dispersed. Hearing these data, we realize anew how difficult it is to recover oil under rough weather conditions offshore. When we think of the winter in the Sea of Japan, as in the case of the NAKHODKA incident, when we think about cleanup activities, we need to give full heed to these data in formulating policies for cleanup.
As for offshore recovery, and when using equipment in natural situations, we need to pay heed to the opinion that we should think of the performance of the equipment as being 20% of what the manufacturers
