Oil Spill Response Capability Building in China and Her Road Map

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent decades, China's strong economic development has brought higher risk of oil spill at sea from ships, oil exploration and land. Accordingly, China government has enacted some new laws and policies such as the compulsory requirements on certain ships calling Chinese ports enter into a preparedness and response contract with a pre-approved response organization, up to now, there are already 137 private oil spill response organizations along the coastline. Also, the port operators are required to invest on oil spill response equipments depending on the result of risk assessment. At the same time, the central government has invested more 20 stockpiles along the sea port and Yangzi River. Nowadays, the amount of clean-up equipments has reached to a historical high level, and the total investment in recent three years is near ten times more than those ten years ago. Therefore, scientific evaluation of the risk and its spatial distribution of oil spill, and development of the reasonable and effective oil spill response capability planning, are the major demands for marine environmental risk management in China. To solve the issues above, a model with oil spill risk evaluation and multi-objective response resources layout is proposed for multi–sources risk. Hopefully, the model will be used to develop the national plan for National Contingency Plan for oil spill capability building in China.