OIL SPILL MANAGEMENT IN OIL SECTOR

RESPONSE AND FACILITES

Oil Industry Safety Directorate

Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas
8th Floor, OIDB Bhawan, Plot No. 2, Sector73, Noida201301 (U.P.)
Website: www.oisd.gov.in
Tele: 0120-2593800, Fax: 0120-2593802
 Table of Contents

S.No. Particulars Page No.

1. Introduction & Promulgation of NOSDCP 1

2. Tiered System for Oil Spill 1

3. Appearance of Floating Oil 2

4. Oil Spill Response Equipment 2

5. Oil Spill Dispersant 3

6. Preparedness of Oil industry 4

7. Meeting of Committee of Secretaries on oil 7

Spill Management

8. Role of Indian Coast Guard 9

9. Way Forward 10

11. Annexures :

i) List of OSR Equipment 12

ii) Typical MOU of pooling of Resources 13
iii) List of Participants: Meeting with stake 20
holders on 3rd Jul2012
 Oil Industry Safety Directorate
OIDB Bhawan
Noida

Marine Oil Spill Management

1.0 Introduction

Marine Oil Spill is one of the major threats for marine environment. The
consequences of an Oil Spill are profound and can adversely affect
harbors, beach, wild life, fisheries, human health, tourism and industrial
plants. When these resources are affected, there may be a serious
impact to the local economy of the affected costal area. Therefore, Oil
Spill incidents need to be addressed by way of advance preparedness or
contingency planning.

In our country, the major sources of Oil Spill are marine tankers, oil
installations & SPM etc. With the capacity addition in oil exploration and
refining the threat for oil spill is increasing day by day. The issue of
marine oil spill in India is given in Merchant Shipping Act -1958 partly as it
doesnt address the entire chain of command in case of such
contingencies.

2.0 Promulgation of NOS DCP

The committees of secretaries to the Govt. of India while allocating

functional responsibilities to various ministries and departments for oil
spill response in the marine zones of India have approved the National
Oil Spill Disaster Contingency Plan (NOS DCP) in Nov.93. The Director
General Coast Guard was designated as the Central Coordinating
Authority (CCA) to implement the plan, and coordinate response activities
in the event of oil spill at sea. The Ministry of Shipping, the Department of
Ocean Development, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, oil
companies, Port authorities and Maritime States are also the stake-
holders in the plan.

3.0 Tiered system for Oil Spill Response (OSR)

Based on the IMO guidelines following Tier system has been adopted to
deal with the contingencies arising out of oil spill in the marine area.

The oil spill up to 700 MTs is considered as the Tier-I oil spill
The oil spill up to 10,000 MT is considered as Tier-II oil spill and
The oil spill of more than 10,000 MT is considered as Tier-III oil spill
4.0 Appearance of Floating Oil on Sea Surface

Based on the appearance i.e. colour of the oil spill on the sea surface it is
possible to arrive at a rough estimate of the quantity of oil spill. The table
below depicts the appearance of oil spill on sea and quantity of oil spill.

Oil type Appearance Approximate Approximate

thickness volume (litres/km2)
Oil sheen Silver > 0.0001 mm 100 Litres
Oil sheen Iridescent > 0.0003 300
(rainbow)
Crude and Brown to black > 0.1 mm 100000
fuel oil
Water-in-oil Brown/orange > 1 mm 1000000
emulsion

5.0 Oil Spill Response Equipment

The prime Strategy for oil spill response is containment, collection and
disposal of the oil spill. The equipment required for the oil spill response
are:

Boom for containment of the oil

Skimmer - for pumping the contained oil
Floating storage for collection of spilled oil
Disposal facility at shore
Tugs for laying the booms etc.

Figure above shows the lowering of skimmer from boat to sea

 Figure above depicts the laying of containment boom with the help of tug

A list of OSR Tier-I equipment as advised by Coast Guard is given in

annexure-I.

6.0 Oil Spill Dispersant (OSD)

Dispersants are also used as a measure to combat Oil Spill. Dispersant

are chemical agents that include surface active agents which are partly
oil and water soluble. Dispersants facilitate the breakdown of an oil slick
into tiny droplets, which are suspended and disseminated in the water
mass. Dispersed oil degrades more rapidly than oil in a surface slick
resulting into lesser threat to environment than oil.

However, the dis-advantage of using dispersant is, it is not environment

friendly. The toxicity of dispersant in some cases pollutes the eco system
and offset the environmental gain.

6.1 Role of dispersant

The mechanical response has limitation like poor recovery rate etc. The
use of booms and skimmers is usually effective only at moderate seas
with lesser current. Even for calm conditions, it may be not be feasible to
use mechanical equipment alone to deal with large spills in which oil
spreads rapidly over large areas. For this reason use of chemical
dispersant is considered a complementary option in responding to an oil
spill emergency.

The dispersant breaks oil into tiny droplets which disperses & distributes
the tiny droplets in water column. The surface slick is prone to drift due
to winds and waves. It increases local oil toxicity unless the suspension
is sufficiently diluted in the water column.
6.2 Types of Dispersant

Following types of dispersants are normally used:

Type I Conventional Hydrocarbon base: - These are normally

used in undiluted form and application rate is generally one part of
OSD to 2-3 parts of oil.

Type II Water Dilute-able Concentrate: These dispersant are

used after dilution with sea water normally 1:10 ratio and application
rate (diluted OSD) is similar as above.

Type III Concentrate: - These are alcohol/glycol solvent based

dispersant containing higher concentration of surface active agents.
These are primarily used in undiluted form and generally used from
aircrafts and ships using appropriate spray gear.

Good oil dispersant should be highly effective, less toxic and should not
increase the toxicity of oil. The OSD should be safe for personnel
handling the product.

6.3 Use of OSD

When physical methods of recovery of oil like mechanical deployment of

OSR equipment are not safe / practical then, approved OSD with prior
permission of Indian Coast Guard should be used. The use of dispersant
should be documented in respective contingency plans and only
dispersant which are approved must be used.

7.0 Preparedness of Oil Industry

7.1 Background

In a meeting held on 28th June 1996, the then Oil Coordination

Committee (OCC), Apex Body, reviewed the Environment Agenda for the
petroleum sector. The Secretary, P&NG advised oil companies to
strengthen Oil Spill Management.

Subsequent meeting was held in 1997 with Oil Industry Safety Directorate
(OISD) as a coordinator, wherein it had been decided that oil companies
must provide Oil Spill Response Tier-I facility (OSR Tier-I) at areas of
their operations. At port locations, where more than one company /
companies are operating, facility(s) to be implemented on mutually
agreed cost sharing basis.
 Accordingly 21 locations were identified to set up Tier-I Oil Spill
Response Facilities to combat oil spill at initial stage. These locations
include:

Coastal refineries of IOCL (Haldia, CPCL-Manali & Nagapatinam),

MRPL-ONGC ( Mangalore ) , HPCL( Mumbai & Vizag) , BPCL (
Mumbai & Kochi), RIL (Jamnagar), Essar Oil ( Vadinar ) and

Offshore exploration installations.

7.2 Present Status on Implementation

Present status of implementation of OSR Tier-I facility is enumerated

below:

Sl. NO. Details Numbers

01. Identified Locations for Tier-I OSR facility 21
02. Locations where Tier-I OSR facility 15
implemented
03. Locations where Tier-I OSR facility is under 05
implementation
04. At Okha, Gujarat, IOCL has stopped 1
operations

Locations where OSR Tier-I facility is implemented:

Offshore Locations

ONGC- western offshore; BG Exploration at western offshore; Cairn

Energy at Ravva Offshore (Total 3)

SPM Locations

IOCL-Vadinar & Paradeep; BORL - Vadinar, Essar Oil - Vadinar;

Reliance- Sikka port, Jamnagar (Total 5)

Port Locations :

Chennai, Nagapatinam, Tuticorin, Haldia*, Kochi, Mangalore & Port

Blair (Total 7)

*At Haldia, the facility is not properly maintained by Port (Haldia Dock
Complex). Port and other user companies needs to address this issue
and maintain the OSR Tier-I facility.

Locations where OSR Tier-I facility is under implementation:

MOU has been finalized at Mumbai Port, Kandla Port & Vizag Port
with respective Port Trusts and user companies to implement the
facility. Procurement of OSR equipment by Port is in progress.
 The MOU finalization is in progress at Goa port.

Kolkata Port Trust at Budge Budge & other companies seem to have
taken a stance that since the volume handled is less at Budge Budge
no such facility is required to be set-up. However, this is not factual;
further this location besides white oil also handles black oil and LOBS
which are more complex and difficult to handle and impacts
environment more. This issue needs to be sorted out with KoPT.

New/ additional locations where OSR Tier-I facility is implemented:

OSR Tier-I facility is implemented in following offshore oil installations

including SPMs which have come up later :

Production installation of RIL at KG Basin,

SPM of BPCL at Kochi offshore,

SPM of HPCL at Vizag offshore etc.

OSR Tier-I facility needs to be implemented by all the upcoming

marine oil installations including SPM, E&P installations.

The following map shows the locations of various offshore installations

located in the Maritime zones of India.

7.3. Memorandum of Understanding for pooling of resources

In order to strengthen the regional Oil Spill Response amongst the oil
companies, OISD has advised all the concerned oil companies to prepare
MOU entailing details for pooling of oil spill resources (OSR Tier-I
resources).
 Apropos to this and various round of discussions and meetings the
following eight groups have been formed for the purpose of MOU / mutual
resource pooling group based on the location as under:

S.N Area Location Company Facility

o.
1. Western Vadinar IOCL 2 SPMs
Coast RIL 5 SPMs
Essar 1 SPM
BORL 1 SPM
2. Hazira Cairn Production
Niko Platforms
3. Mumbai High ONGC & Production
BG Platforms
ONGC 5 SPMs
BG 1 SPM
4. Kochi BPCL 1 SPM &
Jetty at port
5. Eastern Coast KG Basin/ Cairn Production
Yanam RIL Platforms
GSPC
ONGC
6. Puducherry Hardy Production
HOEC Platforms
7. Vizag HPCL 1 SPM &
Jetty at port
8. Paradeep IOCL 1 SPM &
Jetty at port

MOU has been completed in all locations except at Pudduchery where

out of two companies in operation the operation of Hardy platform is under
suspension since July 2010. A typical copy of the MOU is enclosed as
annexure-II.

Besides the above there are large & small port locations, private ports where
similar MOU can be prepared.

8.0 Meeting of COS on Oil Spill Management

Meeting of the Committee of Secretaries (COS) is held regularly and the

last meeting was held on 2nd Dec2011 under the Chairmanship of
Cabinet Secretary and decisions taken in the meeting are:

1. M/o Home Affairs may convene the next meeting of the Apex Inter-
Ministerial Committee for Oil Spill Response by end-December 2011 and
hold meetings regularly thereafter as may be necessary.

2. Necessary directives to finalize preparation of their Oil Spill Contingency

plan, and subsequent regular review thereof, may be given to Ports by
M/o Shipping and to oil companies Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas.
 Secretary (Security), Cabinet Secretariat may have oversight
responsibility of the preparation of Contingency Plans on Oil Spill of
coastal States/UTs.
M/o Defence may have overall responsibility and may coordinate among
all entities at the Centre on all implementation issues arising from the
National Oil Spill Disaster Contingency Plan. Oil Spill Crisis Management
Committee may be constituted to be chaired by Defence Secretary. Issue
of responsibility for overall coordination on implementation issues at the
state level may be raised by M/o Defence during the Chief Secretaries
Conference scheduled to be held on 03.02.2012.

3. M/o Shipping shall head an Inter-Ministerial Committee, with M/o

Petroleum & Natural Gas, M/o Defence and M/o Home Affairs as
members, and ICG as the Convener, on availability and maintenance of
Tier-I pollution response facilities by Ports, oil companies and coastal
States/UTs. Representatives of State Government/UT Administration
concerned may be invited to meetings of the Inter-Ministerial Committee
as may be necessary. ICG may conduct regular audit of Tier-I pollution
response facilities. M/o Shipping may issue instructions designating the
Chairperson of the Port Trust as the nodal agent for maintaining Tier-I
pollution response equipment and facilities by all companies within Port
limits.

4. M/o Shipping shall be responsible for verifying whether all shipping

companies, including oil companies, have tie-ups with OSROs for Tier-III
pollution response facilities. DG (Shipping) may examine the feasibility of
maintaining Tier-III pollution response facilities through private OSROs.

5. M/o Shipping may take suitable actions to prevent unseaworthy ships

from operating in Indian waters.

6. M/o Environment & Forests may expeditiously promulgate the necessary

notification, after undertaking a survey of the areas and evaluation of the
available oil spill dispersants in consultation and coordination with D/o
Science & Technology and D/o Biotechnology.

7. M/o Shipping may expedite finalization of the draft Cabinet Note for
amending the Merchant Shipping Act, 1958, to incorporate the provisions
of OPRC, 1990, including designation of CNA, in consultation with
Ministries/Departments concerned. The progress made and updated
status may be sent to the Cabinet Secretariat by 12.12.2011, and the
finalized Note may be forwarded to the Cabinet Secretariat within one
month of this meeting.

8. ICG may prepare an approach paper examining the issues underlying the
proposal to mandate existence of pre-contractual arrangements by all
ships entering Indian Ports with OSROs, in consultation with
Ministries/Departments/agencies concerned, drawing up also a suitable
timeframe for implementation of its recommendations, and forward the
approach paper for consideration by CoS at the earliest.
9. M/o Shipping may take up expediting of its comments/ views by M/o Law
& Justice in a focused manner and forward the finalized Notes for the
Cabinet incorporating the provisions of the Bunker Convention, 2001 and
Wreck Removal convention, 2007 in domestic laws to the Cabinet
Secretariat by mid-January 2012.

10. D/o Science & Technology may develop and validate the tests for
identifying polluters at the earliest, and to start with, two Oil Finger
printing Laboratories for identifying polluters may be set up at existing
premier scientific laboratories/institutions, one on the east coast and the
other on the west coast, with the assistance of CSIR/TERI.

11. M/o Shipping and M/o Petroleum & Natural Gas may study the matter of
installation of oil spill detection software in the VTMS radars at Ports and
VATMS radars of oil companies along the coastline within six weeks. The
installation, if found feasible, may be done in a time bound manner
thereafter. Any problems in this regard and/or alternatives, if installation
on existing VTMS/VATMS radars is not found feasible, may be placed
jointly by them before the CoS.

12. Status quo may be maintained with regard to maintenance of Tier-II

pollution response facilities by ICG, and Tier-III facilities by ICG with
international support, in the case of oil spills from Single Buoy Moorings.

13. M/o Shipping may take suitable action with regard to salvage operations,
including exploring the feasibility of including salvage component in the
Emergency Towing Vessels contract, to undertake oil removal from
grounded sunken ships.

14. Oil companies/ Ports would be responsible for Tier-I pollution response
equipment and facilities with regular audits by ICG, but that Tier-II
facilities were the responsibility of ICG along the entire shoreline/inter-
tidal areas, including Gulf of Kutch, Mumbai and Kakinada which have
high sensitivity.
15. M/o Shipping may examine all aspects of the matter of the proposed
National Oil Spill Corpus Fund for contingent expenditure during oil spill
response operations and a view may be taken in consultation with M/o
Finance, ICG and M/o Petroleum & Natural Gas.

9.0 Role of Indian Coast Guard (ICG)

The role and responsibility of ICG and other agencies have been
delineated and are briefly stated below:

National Oil Spill Disaster Contingency Plan (NOS-DCP) was approved

by COS in Nov 1993. Director General, Indian coast Guard designated as
the Central Coordinating Agency (CCA) to implement the plan and
coordinate response activities in the event of oil spill at sea.

Ministry of Shipping, Department of Ocean Development, Ministry of

Petroleum & Natural Gas, Oil companies, Port Authorities and Maritime
States are the stakeholders in the plan.
 ICG periodically reviews the NOS-DCP provisions with the industry, port
authorities, maritime state pollution control boards, DG shipping etc.

The Coast Guard vets the Contingency Plan prepared by the respective
Operator for handling oil spill emergencies. The plan inter-alia covers,
the list of equipments, trained manpower & contact details etc.

10.0 Way Forward

With a view to review the progress made on various activities pertaining

to oil spill response and firm up future course of action, a review meeting
was held at OISD on July 3, 2012. Senior officials from Ministry, Coast
Guard, DGH, Oil companies and OISD attended the meeting. The list of
participants attached as annexure-III. The participating member from
various oil organizations made detailed presentation on their
preparedness plan, resources available to manage tier-I oil spill, and
some of the problem areas. Deliberations on what should be the
optimum time for response was one of the core issues; DIG, Coast
Guard agreed to provide input on this vital issue based on International
norms & other best practices.

Action areas evolved during the meeting are given in the seriatim below:

Optimum response time to attend to oil spill is yet to be firmed up;

necessary inputs on the same would be provided by Coast Guard to
improve the efficacy of handling such a situation including optimum time
to respond.
Action: Coast Guard

DGH being the licenser should prepare and incorporate a chapter on

Preparedness to deal with Oil Spill in various phases of exploration
activities in the licensing document.
Action: DGH

Oil companies must ensure implementation of OSR Tier-I facility,

whenever, new facility in marine area is established.

Action: All oil companies

Presently oil companies like ONGC have taken membership with M/s
OSRL, Singapore to deal with major oil spills but the response time may
be high for foreign OSROs to deal with such a scenario depending upon
availability of their equipment, facilities, requirement of various legal
formalities etc. In view of this it is suggested that for major locations i.e. at
Gulf of Kutch (Kandla/Vadinar), Bombay High, Kakinada - oil companies
jointly may explore the idea of having their own rescue and oil spill
management vessel to combat such a major spill. This is also in line with
recommendation made during meeting of Cabinet Secretaries.

Action: DGH/ All oil companies in the above locations

 The OSR Tier-I facility does not address the issue of shoreline protection,
in case of oil spill reaching the shores. Coast Guard to work out the
modalities in this regard.
Action: Coast Guard

For Companies having large areas of operation viz. ONGC in Mumbai

High area, additional facilities over and above the extant OSR Tier-I
facility may be deployed.
Action: ONGC

Oil companies are facing difficulties in implementing / maintaining the

Tier-I facility at port locations (where petroleum products are loaded /
unloaded using jetty) as the facility is operated & maintained by port with
financial assistance by user oil companies. Further it was also reported
during the meeting that port authorities do not also participate in the
review meetings etc. This issues need to be addressed through inert-
ministerial dialogue.

Action: MoP&NG to take up with Ministry of Shipping

Some of the foreign countries allow in-situ burning of spilled oil in high
seas after containing the oil with fire retardant boom. Incorporation of
similar provision may be explored by Coast Guard.

Action: Coast Guard

Mock drills twice a year must be conducted at all locations on oil spill
response scenario for ensuring preparedness to handle such emergency
situations.

Action: All oil companies in coordination with Coast Guard

 Annexure-I

List of pollution response equipment for OSR Tier-I facility

(As advised by Coast Guard)

Category of PR Equipment Manpower Requirements

Installation
More than 5 Boom 2000 Mtrs Trained in IMO Level I-
Offshore Skimmer 04 (20TPH) 10 persons
platforms in one OSD Applicator 06 Nos Trained in IMO Level II-
area OSD-10,000 Ltrs 04 persons
Flex Barge 04 (10 Tons) Trained in IMO Level III-
Current Buster booms at 01 person
ports where tidal current Other 10 person
is >2 kn 02 Nos.
Sorbent pads 2000
Nos/200 Kgs
Shore cleanup equipment
Mini Vacuum
pumps/OSD
applicator/Fast tanks 05
Workboats 02
Tugs -02
Offshore Boom 1000 Mtrs Trained in IMO Level I
installation / Skimmer 04 (20TPH) 06 persons
SPM OSD Applicator 02 Nos Trained in IMO LEVEL II-
OSD 5000 Ltrs 02 persons
Flex Barge 2 Nos Other 10 persons
( 10 Tons)
Sorbent boom pack 200
Mtrs
Sorbent pads 1000 Nos
Current Buster booms at
ports where tidal current
is >4 kn 02 Nos.
Workboat 01
Tug 01

Vessel/ Platform Boom 600 Mtrs Trained in IMO Level I-

involved in Skimmer 02 (20TPH) 02 persons
drilling OSD Applicator -02 Nos Other 05 persons
OSD 3,000 Ltrs
Flex Barge 02 (10
Tons)
MSV/OSV/ Tugs 01
LNG/LPG/Nap Boom 600 Mtrs Trained in IMO Level I-
handling in Skimmer 02 (20TPH) 02 persons
marine area OSD Applicator -02 Nos Other 05 persons
OSD 3,000 Ltrs
Flex Barge 02
(10 Tons)
Workboat 01
 Annexure-II

Typical MOU of Pooling of Resources for OSR Tier-I Facilities

 Annexure-III

MEETING ON OIL SPILL RESPONSE

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

MoPNG, OISD & DGH

1. Shri Deependra Pathak, Director (E-1), MoP&NG

2. Shri Hirak Dutta, ED, OISD
3. Shri S.L. Chakravorty, Dir (PS) OISD
4. Shri A. Walia,Dir (E&P), OISD
5. Shri Shashi Vardhan, Addl. Dir. , OISD
6. Shri Pramod Kumar, Jt. Dir. OISD
7. Shri Arun Bhattacharjee, DGH, Noida
8. Shri K.K. Darad, DGH, Noida

Indian Coast Guard

9. Shri A.A. Hebbar, DIG, Coast Guard, New Delhi

Industry Representatives

10. Shri R.K. Raju, GM, HSE, RIL upstream, Mumbai

11. Shri Damien Gracious. K.D, DGM (F&S), BPCL Kochi Refinery
12. Shri Mathukutty Cyriac, Chief Manager, BPCL, Kochi Refinery
13. Shri A.K. Gupta, GM-HSE, IOCL RHQ New Delhi
14. Shri U.K. Bhomick, CM, HSE. IOCL RHQ, New Delhi
15. Ms. M. Maity, Manager- HSE, IOCL Haldia Refinery
16. Shri P.R. Thatte, Sr. VP, BORL- Vadinar
17. Shri K. Ajaykumar, CO-HSE, ONGC, Delhi
18. Shri Sujit Chaudhuri, GM-HSE, BGEPIL, Mumbai
19. Shri R. Venkatesh, BGEPIL, New Delhi.
20. Shri SowreshGon, Cairn Energy, Gurgaon
21. Shri Vidiyala Ravi, Cairn Energy Gurgaon.
22. Shri R. Prasad, GM-HSE, IOCL Pipeline, Noida.
23. Shri S.M. Singh, IOCL Pipeline, Noida
24. Shri NipanDoley, IOCL Pipeline, Vadinar.
25. Shri Milan Nanda, IOCL Pipeline, Paradip
26. Shri K.S. Rao, IOCL-Marketing, Mumbai
27. Shri Sachin Shah, Essar Oil Jamnagar.