Toshiaki Ono
Nisseki Section
Kuribayashi Corporation
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
My name is Toshiaki Ohno with Kuribayashi Shokai Co.,Ltd. inMuroran City in Hokkaido, and I am responsible for the maintenance of oil
spill response equipment and materials at No. 5 Hokkaido Stockpile Base of
the Petroleum Association of Japan (PAJ) which is established in Muroranrefinery of Nippon Mitsubishi Petroleum Refining Co., Ltd.
I would like to speak briefly on my impressions of participating in
the exercise jointly organized last December by Saudi ARAMCO,
Arabian Oil Company, and Petroleum Association of Japan, and tocomment on a few where I feel that some improvement is necessary.
The image that I initially had of Saudi Arabia was that of very
faithful Muslim country where the two Holly mosques are located and theworld biggest oil producing country so on. But above all she had serious oil
pollution damage during the Gulf War in 1991 and showed her great ability
to deal with the oil spill. Therefore I was very much interested in the kind ofoil spill equipment and training system in use in Saudi ARAMCO. At thesame time, I was convinced that it would be a learning experience for me toparticipate in this exercise, seeing firsthand a world-class oil spill response
system in action.
Overall, I was very much impressed by the speed of response in the
joint exercise—organizing response headquarters, and simultaneously
assembling experts and exchanging information on national levels. I thinkthat I am not the only one to feel the difference compared with exercises wehave ever had in Japan in terms of speed and drive in deploying equipment,
vessels, and aircraft on a real-time basis, according to a realistic scenario.
In particular, the oil dispersant spraying demonstration using small
air-crafts was spectacular. I got a strong impression of the level of skill andtechnique Saudi ARAMCO possesses.
The role of our PAJ team in the exercise was deploying oil boom in
J-formation under the commander's instructions, and Saudi ARAMCO teamlaunching oil skimmer to the concentration of the oil in the apex of the- 1 -boom.
Unfortunately, due to strong winds on that day the headquarters
changed their instruction to us to survey the sea surface. Still, the exercise,starting from PAJ’s oil spill equipment transport from PAJ Al-Khafji Baseto oil dispersant spraying, ended in success and achieved its goals.
Thank to a kind offer from Saudi ARAMCO ,the part of exercise
which we had been unable to do was postponed to the next day and we
could deploy oil boom. However, the winds remained strong, making
deployment oil boom extremely difficult. We also discovered the difficultyof a joint exercise, mainly caused by inadequate communication between
Japanese and Saudi ARAMCO team.
This is one of most important issues that we believe must be
addressed for joint exercises in the future. We felt frustrated and regretted
that we were unable to take swift action due to lack of adequate
communication, in another expression we could not make ourselves
understood in English promptly and adequately.
Especially in inclement weather, the unexpected can happen during
boom deployment, and the leader must make decisions swiftly. Also, people
at the site must keep in communication while operation, and any shortfall inteamwork can lead to serious errors.
Although the problems caused by lack of teamwork applied also tothe early stage of our exercises held at stockpile bases in Japan, we wereable to resolve the problems through more active and frequent participationin exercises and the development of mutual trust.
In view of what I experienced, I propose that joint exercises fromnow on should not be limited to the deployment of equipment but include
active participation, commencing with installation of equipment andmaterials, in order to strengthen teamwork among operators and increase
communication among them.
Although our first participation in the joint exercise exposed issues
that must be resolved and was far from perfect, it was fruitful in the sensethat we were able to see for ourselves the level of oil spill response of Saudi
ARAMCO. I firmly believe that we will be able to take the first step
towards greater success.

- 2 -I also believe that we must deepen our ties with Saudi ARAMCO
and make greater efforts at manpower training by boosting the skill level atall bases in Japan.
Lastly, I would like to acknowledge our indebtedness to the peopleof Saudi ARAMCO, Arabian Oil Company, and the Petroleum Associationof Japan in allowing us to participate in this exercise, and to thank you all
on behalf of all at the stockpile bases in Japan.
We intend to make a great effort to make use of this experience andto contribute in whatever ways we can to PAJ’s oil spill response activities.
Thank you very much for your attention.

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