Summary of Working Paper No. 76-1997
II.6.5: Coastal Pollution Emergency Plan, Part I
By G. Semanov, V. Volkov, V. Somkin and D. Iljushenko-Krylov, Central Marine
Research and Design Institute (CNIIMF), St.Petersburg, Russia
A higher degree of ecological safety of the ship traffic is dependent not only
upon onboard measures, but is also closely associated with the shore,
particularly with the reception facilities for collection and treatment of ship
generated wastes and the preparedness for combating the emergency oil spills. The
problem is particularly acute in the NSR because of:
While in the recent years there have been no oil spills in the NSR, they are
quite likely to happen in the near future as the off-shore production and
transportation of oil by ships and pipes is planned. Therefore, the preparedness for
the oil spill combating becomes very important, one aspect of which being the
development of the Oil Spill Contingency Plan (OSCP).
The principal objective of the plan is to gain the response and preparedness,
the preparation and organization of major operations for OSCP through the use
of capabilities and sources of a response organization assisted by some others
concerned.
The OSCP of NSR is a regional plan. There are three following levels of
creating it:
1. Development of concept, definition of response organizations and technical
ability of them. (Part I)
2. Collection and analysis of information, development of scenarios of probable
oil spills, clearing of the funding mechanism and the basis for additional
outside cooperation in case of emergencies from other Russian regions and
circumpolar countries. (Part II)
3. Development of the NSR oil spill contingency plan. (Part III)
The goal of the 1995 work is to solve the aims of the first level.
The NSR oil spill contingency plan's concept will take into account:
1. subdivision of the Route into two eastern and western response areas;
2. interaction and links between responsible organizations;
3. existing realities of the Russian Arctic, such as transport, communications,
energy, labour resources, etc.;
4. requirements of the IMO and of the International Convention OPRC 90 which will
be shortly joined by Russia.
According to the Russian legislation on the environment protection from
pollution and on combating the emergency oil spills, implementation of the combating
operations at sea is the responsibility of the MPCSA that consists of the
Central Administration (CA) and the basin emergency divisions (BEDs). For combating
the emergency oil spills in the seas of the NSR, two basin divisions are
designated: the Murmansk basin emergency division (MBED) is responsible for the
western Arctic and the Far East basin emergency division (FEBED) for the eastern
Arctic. The divisions are centered in the non-freezing ports of Murmansk and
Nahodka respectively which have most powerful and equipped bases for salvage
operations, aircraft bases and airports in their vicinities, and an advanced
infrastructure. The MPCSA is in charge of carrying out cleaning operations at sea from
installations, either governmental or private. The operations can be assisted
with resources and means of the co-operating organizations and helped by those of
other countries in accordance with international agreements of the Russian
Federation. For some areas of the NSR Russia has such agreements with Norway (for
the Barents Sea) and with the United States (for the Bering Sea).
By analogy with a staff for ice operations, for immediate control of the oil
spill combating (OSC) operations the plan should provide for establishment of
the operational management staff (OMS) that should periodically meet to assess
the efficiency of the plan, exercises, and drills. The OMS should include
representatives of region administrations the ice operation headquarters, the Emercon,
control authorities and the largest co-operating organizations; and it should
be headed by the administration of the region where a spill has occurred. The
OMS should be added by a working group and assisted by an expert group. The
on-scene commander at sea is usually the head of BED. For reception, processing and
transmission of information, the plan should provide for the use of existing
Arctic communication centers, as well the possibility of creating temporal
communication points. The plan should specify high risk zones, priority areas for
protection, data on actual and expected amount of oil traffic and estimates of
likely volumes of the emergency oil spills. A11 the information is presented in
projects of the I, II and III subprogrammes of the INSROP Programme. The present
report (Part I) provides the plan's concept, rescue organizations and data on
types and amounts of the oil spill combating technical means and of the
floating facilities available in the NSR or in its vicinity.
exclusively high vulnerability of the Arctic ecosystems,
very low rates of natural degradation of oil in the Arctic seas,
absence of a forward coastal infrastructure,
low efficiency of the oil combating means in ice conditions,
severe climatic conditions in the Arctic