15 July, 2006

SHETLAND based environmental pressure group KIMO yesterday (Friday) condemned the Maritime Coastguard Agency for allowing the transfer large volumes of Russian crude between oil tankers offshore in the Firth of Forth.

KIMO said the MCA had ignored almost every response from stakeholders during the consultation process.

The environmental group added they were against ship to ship transfer in the open waters of the Firth of Forth, but had no objections to similar operations in the sheltered waters of Sullom Voe, in Shetland, and Scapa Flow, in Orkney.

The MCA announced yesterday that it has informed Forth Ports plc of its intention to approve the oil spill contingency plan covering ship-to-ship transfers in the Firth of Forth.

In a statement KIMO chairman councillor Angus Nicolson said: "This is an incredible decision that totally disregards a consensus from experts, statutory agencies such as Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) and the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA), wildlife organisations such as RSPB and local authorities emergency planners that have highlighted the inadequacy of the plan to deal with a major oil pollution incident in the Forth as a result of these activities.

"If they are going to disregard this substantial body of advice against this proposal what is the point of consulting. This just confirms our suspicions that this was already a done deal. It is time for the Scottish Executive and the Scottish environment minister to intervene and protect our marine environment in Scotland and refuse to licence this activity which we believe it has the power to do under conservation regulations."

Secretary for organisation, Rick Nickerson added that KIMO had no objections to similar operations taking place in the Sullom Voe harbour area, as long as "it is done inside the port alongside the jetty under very strict controls".

He added: "In fact we would like these transfers to take place either at Sullom Voe or in Orkney at Scapa Flow but of course because of the strict controls there it is more expensive so they want to do it in open waters in the Firth of Forth and obviously it will be cheaper."

Councillor Nicolson said that due to the increasing volumes of crude oil and other hydrocarbons being exported through the Baltic and Barents Sea's ship-to-ship transfers of heavy oil would become increasingly common around the North Sea.

"Such operations represent a significant pollution threat to UK and North Sea coastal waters. It is therefore paramount that all applications to carry out ship-to-ship transfers include an environmental impact assessment, have a contingency plan which covers the worst-case scenario spill, require the provision of tugs and emergency response vessels on station with the capacity to deal with a worst case scenario for the duration of the transfer."