KARACHI, Dec 9: A three-day workshop on oil spill response strategies and planning got under way on Tuesday for personnel of government agencies and oil companies.

Speaking as chief guest at the inauguration of the workshop, jointly organized by the International Maritime Organization and Karachi Port trust, Karachi Commander Vice-Admiral Irfan Ahmad said that the government was in the process of giving legal coverage to pollution prevention measures.

He mentioned that the government was keenly observing all aspects of pollution prevention and any suggestion regarding the legal aspects of maritime convention would be considered by it, both at federal as well as provincial level.

He said that Pakistan, as a party to the UN convention on Law of the Sea, had an obligation to protect and preserve the coastal and marine environment, while being a signatory to the International Convention on Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Cooperation, 1990, it had to maintain an effective national contingency plan as well.

“The port authorities and other relevant organizations, including oil companies, should be equipped to handle oil spills in their respective areas of jurisdiction. The response equipment is also very expensive, but this cost can be reduced significantly by manufacturing it indigenously,” he remarked.

Referring to the huge oil spill from foreign oil tanker Tasman Spirit, the commander said that it had caused immense damage to marine and coastal environment, but response operation carried out by the KPT in collaboration with other organizations was found to be very tedious yet very professionally executed. On its part the KPT, during the oil spill incident, did a good job in containing adverse effects of the spillage to the port facilities, he stressed.

He held that the workshop was well timed in the wake of Tasman incident. “In fact the Tasman Spirit oil spill has promoted awareness to such an extent that people are now more than interested in seminars, symposium and workshops, which are in the context of oil spills,” he observed.

A senior IMO expert on marine pollution, John Ostergaard, informed the participants of the workshop that a draft contingency plan for oil spill response in the case of underdeveloped countries had been completed and agreement of IMO members was being sought.

While mentioning that the guidelines prepared in the light of IMO contingency plan for oil spill, for Pakistan and other member countries of the South Asian region, had been drafted by the body concerned. The expert believed that the recent oil spill at Karachi was enough for Pakistan and other countries in the region to realize the need of adopting the guidelines at national as well as regional level.

KPT chairman Vice-Admiral Ahmad Hayat said that the holding of workshop on ‘Oil Spill Preparedness and Response Cooperation (OPRC)’ by IMO and the presence of different quarters showed their concern towards the need of having a contingency plan to combat oil spills.

He said that Pakistan was a signatory to the IMO convention on OPRC since 1995, which made obligatory for the country, like other ratifying states, to acquire equipment and training for combating oil spills in its harbour and coastal waters and to cooperate with other states, when required, to respond to huge accidental oil spills.

He informed the audience that the KPT procured the required equipment in 1996 and was using those regularly for training and pollution control exercises. He referred to several small and medium sized oil spills within the harbour and one at a terminal at the Port Qasim and maintained that oil spill response was not new to the KPT.

However, he added that the Tasman Spirit spill was of a different magnitude and therefore it was a daunting challenge for all those who were involved in tackling it.

Counting the different levels of oil spill response, the admiral mentioned that as far as organizational level plan was concerned, it was very much effective at the KPT since 1997. The national level contingency plan had been drafted and was being finalized by the federal government, while the regional level plan had also been drafted by the South Asian Cooperative Environment Programme, he added.