National oil spill drill successful

THE national oil spill drill, the first major maritime emergency exercise held in Brunei waters, wrapped up successfully yesterday, gaining impressive remarks from parties who were involved in the drill.

The exercise, which began on Monday, saw participation by 700 officers from various government and private agencies.

"From the whole of Brunei's perspective really, its important that we test these things and look to make sure that we can learn when we have the time to learn rather than waiting until we have a problem," said Ken Marnoch, managing director at Brunei Shell Petroleum.

"Looking at the effort that everyone's put in, the things that we've learned about how we can communicate better, how we can work together better, it's been a great three days of effort," he added.

Marnoch was proud of the contribution made by BSP personnel and the professional effort by all parties including government agencies.

"You don't realise how much effort this is until you do everything, I would say that the Incident Management Team's (IMT) focus was how do you make timely decisions to make sure that you do the right thing, because you only have a limited window of opportunity with something like an oil spill, in order to do some things out at sea to prevent it coming to the shore."

A major challenge during any incident, he said, is successful communication and coordination between different parties involved.

Paul Foley, deputy head of Operations Oil Spill Response in Singapore, who was mobilised as the technical advisor for the three-day exercise, explained that the first 24 and 48 hours of the spill was the most crucial, where involved parties set the pace and decisions for the rest of the response.

"So a good decision made early on in a spill can mitigate a lot of impact. By bringing in a technical advisor we can add the lessons learnt from other spills."

"For example, I've just come from the deep water horizon incident in the Gulf of Mexico and we can take some of the lessons learnt there in a real situation and apply them during exercises and during spills. What we've seen over the last couple of days is an evolution really, a gathering of people or a group of people working independently, working together towards the same goal."

He added: "So when we arrived we built these strategic objectives very high level focused on the people, environment, assets and reputation. Number one, it's an oil spill and it's not worth losing people's lives over. That's the number one key factor, and then we cascade down and work out the priorities for protection, and from those work out the issues and generate an action plan."

Foley then said that the action plan would then cascade down from a strategic level and further down towards the tactical level, as implemented and demonstrated towards the end of the exercise yesterday.

Foley also underscored the importance of having the National Oil Spill Contingency Plan (NOSCOP) in place and explained that the main idea was to move quickly from an emergency response to building up a solution project the soonest.

"When an incident kicks off, you're reacting and the incident is driving your reactions. What you need to do is get in front of the incident as quickly as possible so you're not reacting any more; you're planning and pro active and there are no surprises."

"That's what I've seen over the last couple of days, we've reached that point, so (it was a) success."

Aimed at assessing the capabilities of the NOSCOP and evaluating the coordination between the government agencies and the private sector (oil industries) in dealing with oil spills, the drill yesterday saw the demonstration of the "shoreline protection booms", which function as a barricade that hold the oil from actually reaching the shore.

Other methods to contain the oil spill from damaging Brunei's shoreline, environment and assets were the use of offshore Ro-Boom; Aerial Dispersant Spray and Beach Clean-up equipment.

In a scenario which began on Monday, two vessels, Bau Long Ghu, a vessel carrying crude oil, and the Cabalanah, a tugboat collided in Brunei waters triggering an oil leak at 2.40pm.

Present to have a closer view at the drill yesterday were Minister of Communications Pehin Orang Kaya Hamzah Pahlawan Dato Seri Setia Hj Abdullah Begawan Mudim Dato Paduka Hj Bakar and Home Affairs Minister Pehin Udana Khatib Dato Paduka Seri Setia Ustaz Hj Badaruddin Pengarah Dato Paduka Hj Othman.The Brunei Times