On June 5^th 2007, China MSA organized the largest ever drill on emergency service to tackle an oil spill in the waters of Bohai Bay. Several large-sized AtoN service vessels were involved in this drill.

The date was chose as it’s the 34^th World Environment Day. China MSA hopes to take this opportunity to enhance the crisis awareness of the public on marine environmental protection and public safety, as well as to promote the public participation in prevention of pollution from oil spill.

China ranked the world’s second largest oil importer in 2006, with more than 90% of the oil imports transported by sea. A total of 162,949 tankers of all sizes sailed into and out of China’s ports last year, an average of more than 400 every day, statistics show. And just a few days before, a new oilfield in the Bay with estimated deposits of 1 billion tons was discovered, which would inevitably bring the rapid clime of the vessels carrying oil, chemicals and other dangerous materials, making the already tricky navigation conditions even more complicated.

Increased shipping brings more oil pollution accidents. Between 1973 and 2006, 2,635 oil spills occurred in China’s coastal waters, involving 37,000 tons of oil. 69 of the accidents were considered serious, involving leaks of more than 50 tons each. Bohai Bay, the mouths of the Yangtze and Pearl rivers, and Taiwan Straits are the four areas most at risk of an oil spill. Bohai Bay is especially at risk because it has a coastline of nearly 3,000km and almost 100 ports, three of which – Dalian, Qinhuangdao and Tianjin – each handle more than 100 million tons of oil every year.

Capt. Liu Gongchen, Executive Director-General of China MSA said that, one of the aims of the drill is to present to the public the three-dimensional emergency scheme, exhibit the technical level of China MSA and assess the overall capability to deal with serious offshore oil accidents.

Mr. Xu Zuyuan, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Communications, and Mr. Zhang He, Vice Governor of Hebei Province assumed the Commander of the drill, and Capt. Liu Gongchen Vice Commander. The drill, with its theme of “Safeguarding marine environmental safety and promoting construction of secure transportation”, was divided into four phases: emergency response, fire-fighting and oil transferring, marine oil recovery and ashore oil removing.
The exercise was announced to be started by Vice Minister Xu Zuyuan at 9:30 a.m., with a simulated explosion of a 10,000-ton oil tanker leaking 500 tons of oil into the sea. Of course, the “spill” was comprised of fire-fighting foam that would cause no pollution to the sea. 

In the first phase, the accident was reported immediately to Oil Spill Emergency Centre in Qinhuangdao and then to China Maritime Search and Rescue Centre to kick off the Oil Pollution Emergency Collaborative Mechanism in Bohai Bay.

In a few minutes, two fireboats arrived to fight the fire from the exploded tanker. Then another oil tanker reached to transfer the remainder from the exploded one.

In the third phase, various kinds of most advanced clean up facilities were put into use.  A helicopter hovering above threw down an oil sampling buoy, and another sprayed oil dispersant. Two tugs laid consecutively two loops of oil absorbent booms, with oil skimmers used to recover the spilled oil.

At last, the leaked oil flowing to the ashore was cleaned with the help of oil absorbents, mini-sized multi skimmers and volunteers from a college.

The drill successfully ended at 11:00 a.m. after the spill was totally cleaned, with at least 20 vessels, two helicopters and more than 500 people including 300 volunteers participating in the exercise. The 90-minute drill integrated a series of high-tech devices, including Vessel Traffic Management System (VTMS), Universal Automatic Identification System (AIS), Closed Circuit Television System of Maritime Affairs (CCTV), electronic sand table, and three-dimensional monitoring system, realizing digital management in accident precaution, decision making and information processing. And some most advanced technologies, such as multi-functional oil skimmer, oil sampling buoy, aircraft sprayer of oil dispersant, oil absorbent boom, etc. were put into use in the exercise.

 “The exercise tempered our oil spill response team, improved the government’s ability in handling such accidents and helped marine environment protection,” Capt. Liu said.