Government to monitor oil spill

The government has ordered the formation of different committees to fully monitor the extent of the damage caused by the spillage from a tanker carrying crude oil, which ran aground just off the coast of the southern port city of Karachi in late July, an environmentalist said on Thursday. Carrying about 67,000 mt of crude, the Greek-registered Tasman Spirit ran aground on 27 July, spilling about 15,000 mt on impact and leaking more of its contents steadily over the next few weeks, causing a huge oil spill that spread quickly along the coastline and forced a thickly-populated shorefront to close its beach after it was swamped by a thick layer of oil. "The ministry of environment has ordered the constitution of different committees which will undertake different tasks in phases which will range from two weeks, for the first monitoring exercise, to six months before the third, and final, phase is completed," Tahir Qureshi, the head of the coastal ecosystems unit at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, Pakistan (IUCN-P), told IRIN from Karachi. In the first phase, lasting two weeks, an IUCN team, led by Qureshi, will start a sampling process of the mangroves along the Karachi coastline to determine the damage to the flora and fauna. "This is being done primarily because the mangroves lie within the tidal zone," Qureshi explained, adding that his team would have to submit their report by mid-December. Once the initial phase has been completed, the second leg of the environmental investigation would focus specifically on the impact of the oil on deeper waters and the seabed, Qureshi said. "This will be part of a recovery plan and focus on indirect restoration," he added, stressing that the third phase, expected to be completed over six months, would mostly be a "possession and recovery plan". The committees have been formed following the submission of an Environmental Impact Assessment Report jointly compiled by various government committees with technical support from IUCN, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the United Nations Environment Programme, which suggests that the Pakistani government should seek compensation directly from the owners of the vessel. The Science and Development Network reported in early September that the government had demanded US $1 billion - an amount termed "insufficient" by Richard Steiner, an expert from the University of Alaska Marine Advisory Programme, who has been working closely with the Sindh Environment Protection Agency (SEPA). "The amount claimed by the government from the vessel's owners is nothing - it's just a slap on the wrists of the insurers," Steiner told a news conference, adding that he thought if Pakistan had been signatory to various international conventions governing oil spills, its claim would have been significantly strengthened. The report agrees with Steiner's assertion, saying that the 1992 Civil Liability Convention (for Oil Pollution Damage) and the 1992 Fund Convention (International Convention for Compensation for Oil Pollution Damage) provide a "straight-forward mechanism whereby the costs of clean-up and pollution damage can be recovered on [a] strict liability basis from the individual tanker owner and P&I Club involved in the incident and from the 1992 Fund, so long as the clean-up measures taken in response to an incident are reasonable and the claims for compensation are well-presented". The report recommends that Pakistan ratify both the conventions. Shafiq Khoso, the director-general of the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA), told IRIN from Karachi that the Pakistani government was aware of the conventions but was more concerned at present with the damage to the environment. "The fact is that the environment has suffered extensive damage because of the oil spill," Khoso maintained, adding that his government was going to an international court to seek damages. Agreeing with his colleague's point-of-view about the damage to the local and marine environment being "very extensive", Salahuddin Haider, the information advisor to the Sindh government told IRIN from Karachi that it had been established "it will take at least a year before the situation returns to anything resembling normalcy". "In the meanwhile, the High Court has ordered that the debris from the tanker must be removed from where it is presently positioned - it is blocking the way of other ships," Haider added. The Pakistani government was very clear about who was responsible for the debacle, he said. "The damage was caused by a ship that was old and worn-out and completely un-seaworthy," Haider stressed. IUCN's Qureshi told IRIN in mid-August that the spillage from the tanker was an "ecological, environmental and economic disaster" and said "forest fisheries have been affected, marine bio-diversity stands in danger of being destroyed and the full effects of this disaster will only just begin to show". Alarmed by the scale of the damage predicted, Karachi port authorities had acted swiftly to preserve their ships and installations, setting up marine "roadblocks" to keep the rapidly spreading swill at bay. But the catastrophe has already hit marine life hard and even residents along the stretch of beach worst-hit by the oil have reported respiratory- and skin-related problems - forcing the provincial government to set up medical camps for the local populace. Meanwhile, the Tasman Spirit continued to leak large amounts of oil, even as other ships were called in to divest the stranded vessel of its remaining contents in a race against time before the ship broke apart under the heavy pounding of coastal waves. Qureshi said soon after the incident that he thought an area extending beyond 35 square km had been polluted: an assessment confirmed by the report that said the initial impacted area covered about 40 km and initial seawater analyses revealed extensive hydrocarbon contamination.