Indian Coast Guard, ports, firms discuss readiness for oil spill disasters

With India being one of the biggest oil and chemical importers, the Indian Coast Guard, major ports and petroleum companies on Thursday discussed the ways of enhancing preparedness to handle oil spill disasters along the Indian waters in future.

Director General of the Indian Coast Guard, Rakesh Pal chaired the 25th meeting of the National Oil Spill Disaster Contingency Plan (NOS DCP) in Gujarat's Vadinagar coast.

All major stakeholders including ports and oil handling companies took part in the meeting including Reliance Industries, Nayara Energy and Hindustan Petroleum.

The National Oil Spill Disaster Contingency Plan (NOSDCP) is a plan for responding to oil spills in Indian waters.

India as the 3rd largest importer of crude, receives large volumes of oil through ships. major chemical importer country. Both oil and chemicals if spilled pose inherent risks to the maritime zones of India and the connected coastlines housing large coastal populations, marine ecosystems, industries and various installations along with the supporting tourism industry.

Preventive measures, by the central coordinating agency, ship owners, oil handling facilities and other concerned stakeholders are thus, required to be taken to prepare for combating any likely marine spill.

Director General Rakesh Pal said that the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) is cognizant and prepared to counter the threats to the region and its resources, including marine oil and chemical spills at sea.

He stressed that as new vulnerabilities continue to emerge, the stakeholders must recognize the opportunity to enhance cooperation through stronger partnerships, effective coordination and imbibing best practices of the developing technology.

He also stated that the Indian Coast Guard is indigenously building two more state-of-the-art pollution response configured specialized vessels besides the three existing ones to further bolster capacity.