Oil spills… our greatest fear
Oil spill exercise proves there’ll be no slip-ups
N OIL spill exercise in the Whitsundays has confirmed that not
only are contingency response plans adequate but also highlighted
several procedures which will be enhanced as a result of the
operation.
Four government agencies — the Queensland Department of
Transport, Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, the Queensland
Parks and Wildlife Service and the Australian Maritime Safety
Authority — took part in Exercise Cumberland in the Whitsundays.
In the mock exercise an imaginary barge being towed by the tug High
Spirit collided with the 6000-tonne cargo ship MV Seletan
close to South Molle Island in the Whitsunday Passage. Two crew
members from the tug were injured and taken to Shute Harbour for
medical attention.
The tug sank shortly after the collision, losing its cargo of 25
drums of assorted oils. The MV Seletan spilled 200 tonnes of
bunker fuel as well as 50 tonnes of coal tar naptha into the ocean.
The GBRMPA’s project officer of shipping and marine pollution
response, Jamie Storrie, said preliminary reaction to the incident
centred on ensuring the safety of the MV Seletan, securing
cargo and fuel, and organising fixed-wing aircraft to spray the area
with dispersants.
"Dispersants would provide the quickest and most effective
response to any spill within the Whitsundays," Mr Storrie said.
"We would follow that up by using booms to surround the vessel
and then turn our attention to protecting the areas of sensitive
wetlands in the neighbouring region."
Mr Storrie emphasised that the scenario demonstrated the
difficulties of undertaking any form of oil spill response in
non-port areas within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
He said that, while the Whitsundays could not be considered a
remote location on the Queensland coast, the physical deployment of
personnel and equipment to such an area would take some hours.
"The exercise estimated that it would have taken us 5–6
hours to transfer the first boom equipment to the incident from
Mackay, and equipment from other centres would have taken 8–10
hours," he said.
Dispersants remain the primary means of controlling the impacts
of an oil spill immediately following an incident. In Exercise
Cumberland the dispersant aircraft were already in Mackay as part of
a training programme and were therefore on the scene earlier than
would normally be the case.
Defending the Reef: Jamie Storrie with the
tools of his trade and a reminder of the ever-present danger, the
Peacock pictured on Piper Reef
Dispersant spray fixed-wing aircraft in Queensland are based at
Emerald and are contracted to be in transit to the scene of an
incident within four hours of call-out. Helicopters based in Mackay
would spray the oil until the fix-wing aircraft arrived but their
rate of application would be substantially less.
The mock exercise, which replicated a significant incident in the
Whitsundays, revealed that there would be substantial pollution of
the islands adjacent to the Whitsunday Passage, including sandy and
rocky shorelines and some areas of highly-protected wetlands.
"There would be low recovery rates of significant numbers
— probably hundreds — of oiled seabirds as well as impacts on a
number of beaches at tourist resorts," Mr Storrie said.
"This would obviously result in the tourist industry losing
significant revenue and there would also be flow-on effects to
resorts which escaped pollution, because of the public image of an
oil spill in the region.
"It would take many months to clean the oil from the
shoreline because of the large number of bays and headlands and the
high level of cleanliness required of those areas due to tourism
pressures."
Mr Storrie reported to the GBRMPA: "The main lesson to be
learned...is that the Authority can expect significant shoreline
impacts. The Authority should not be under any illusion as to
capability to prevent impacts given that physical response times
will be measured in terms of 6–10 hours and chemical dispersant
response times 2–4 hours."
He said the main point of Cumberland and similar exercises was to
identify shortcomings in responses to pollution incidents in
general. A major flaw was a problem with information management and
exchange in the early stages of the event.
"We could have made greater use of aerial surveillance, as
well," he said. "There wasn’t enough surveillance to
derive information as we needed it, although I think that was a
function of the exercise which would not be replicated in a real
event.
"The positive thing was that the shortcomings were all minor
elements of the overall exercise."
Mr Storrie said that, while a response of 6–7 hours from Mackay
to the Whitsundays may appear to be a long time in a fairly
centralised area, it was acceptable considering the various
responses which follow an oil spill.
"It may take up to an hour before call-out," he said.
"If the vessel has an incident and starts leaking immediately
it’s probably going to take upwards of 15–20 minutes for anyone
on board to realise it is leaking oil.
"Then 10 minutes later the first call-out message goes out.
By the time the message works its way down the chain, to the stage
when we actually get people into the store room, you are talking 30
minutes to an hour, just to get people to the storeroom and loading
equipment.
"You’ve got to get a truck there and load it, which
probably takes another hour. It’s a good hour or 90 minutes
travelling time from Mackay to the Whitsundays. Then you’ve got to
unload, get the equipment on to a barge and take it out to the
scene."
Mr Storrie said the actual responses to the incident — the
action on the water — were fairly good, although they were only
desk-topped. There was no actual deployment of equipment except for
the fixed-wing dispersant aircraft.
"Assuming that the oil was dispersible we would have got rid
of about 50 per cent of it in a real incident," he said.
"But dispersant ceases to be an option pretty quickly because
heavy fuel oil generally becomes undispersible after a while. It
becomes thicker and tarrier and the chemicals no longer work."
