KARACHI: Oil containment boom reels, skimmers, tug boats, ships, speed boats with all kinds of other sophisticated equipment and personnel handling it were busy trying to contain the damage in as little time as possible on Thursday.

This was the Barracuda-V exercise within a roughly three-mile radius in deep waters between Sonmiani and Gadani in Balochistan conducted by the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency in coordination with Pakistan Navy and different units of the PN and civil organisations such as the Karachi Port Trust, Port Qasim Authority, Pakistan National Shipping Corporation and Pakistan Customs.

Aboard the PMSS Nusrat, its commanding officer Commander Misbah ul Amin said: “It has been 11 years since the catastrophic incident of massive oil spill near Karachi by the Tasman Spirit and we are still suffering from its after-effects.

“Similarly, there was another oil spillage incident in Alaska some 26 years ago and the marine life and people there still haven’t recovered from it. Therefore, such exercises, including a disaster contingency plan, search and rescue, salvage operations are conducted all over the world to help all the stakeholders prepare for such disasters and also increase their response time in the process to contain the damage,” he said.

In Pakistan, the execution of the National Marine Disaster Contingency Plan is ordered by the Pakistan Maritime Disaster Management Board, which is headed by the chief of the naval staff.

The exercise was conducted in two phases. The first phase was held at the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency headquarters, which included a workshop about the whole exercise and the dangers of oil pollution at sea. The second was the execution phase in the form of the four-hour exercise at sea.

The tug boats release AFFF foam concentrates into the sea to simulate the oil spill and then other vessels got busy opening up the orange and yellow oil containment reels around it. In a real situation another chemical would be released that will change the oil into jelly, which is then dragged along the sea’s surface by the air-filled floating oil containment reels encircling it. While all that’s going in, there are also several skimmers that work like vacuum cleaners on the sea’s surface sucking in the pollutants.

“The simulation was started at 7.15am and our response teams reached the point at 11.40am to curtail the damage within one hour and 40 minutes,” said Commander Misbah ul Amin.

Answering a question about the amount of oil spill they were preparing for, he said: “We are looking to be able to curtail under 700 tonnes of oil spill.”

Asked if the spill was more than that, he said that in that case other international companies working in the vicinity with the wherewithal lent a helping hand, too.

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2014