The NAKHODKA oil spill response - the technical adviser s perspective
T.H. Moller
The International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation Ltd
Staple Hall, Stonehouse Court,
87-90 Houndsditch,
London EC3A 7AX, U.K.

INTRODUCTION
The NAKHODKA oil spill is undoubtedly the most significant marine oil pollution
incident to have occurred this year, and the most serious tanker spill ever in Japan.
The oil spill response arrangements in Japan have been tested to the limits, and is not
surprising that in some instances shortcomings and the need for improvements havebecome apparent. The purpose of this paper is to review the incident in broad terms
from the perspective of ITOPF, as technical advisers, and to identify the particular
problems generated by the NAKHODKA oil spill, how they were tackled, and what
improvements might be made for the future.
ITOPF staff have attended the NAKHODKA oil spill on behalf of the tanker owner, theUnited Kingdom Mutual Steam Ship Assurance Association (UK P&I Club) and theInternational Oil Pollution Compensation Fund (IOPC Fund).
Their role is to provide advice on pollution damage and measures to prevent pollution
damage in the context of the Civil Liability Convention, the Fund Convention and the1992 Protocols, to which Japan is a party.

THE INCIDENT
On 2nd January, 1997 the Russian tanker NAKHODKA (19,684 DWT), en route from
Shanghai, China to Petropavlovsk, Russian Federation with a cargo of 19,000 tonnes ofMedium Fuel Oil, broke up in heavy seas some 110 km north- east of the Oki Islands in
the Sea of Japan. With the exception of the master, all members of the crew were
rescued by the Japanese maritime services. The tanker broke into two sections which
resulted in a spill of some 6,200 tonnes of oil.
The stern section sank soon after the incident and lies at a depth of approximately
2,500 metres with an estimated 10,000 tonnes of cargo on board. The stern section has
continued to leak oil at a rate estimated by the Japanese authorities to be between 3
and 15 m3 per day. Observations in March and April showed that under the prevailingweather conditions, the released oil dissipated within 2 km of reaching the surface.
Investigations with a deep-sea unmanned submarine have shown that the oil is leaking
from two tanks, which together originally contained some 2,480 m3. A government
committee has concluded that current technology does not offer any practical methods
to stem the release, which is not considered to pose a significant threat to coastal
resources.

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The upturned bow section, which may have contained up to 2,800 tonnes of cargo,continued to drift towards the coast of Honshu, leaking oil at a slow rate. The tanker
owner contracted a Japanese salvage contractor, Nippon Salvage, to fix a line to thebow but their attempts were unsuccessful due to the severe weather and lack ofsuitable attachment points. On 7th January, the bow section grounded on rocks, some
200 metes from the shore near the port of Mikuni, Fukui Prefecture. Following the
grounding of the bow section, a substantial quantity of oil was released, causing heavy
contamination of the adjacent coast.
Efforts by Nippon Salvage on behalf of the tanker owner to remove the remaining oilfrom the bow section, estimated to be between 1 ,000 and 1 ,500 tonnes, were hamperedby adverse weather conditions and a strong swell.
Control of this operation was taken over by the authorities on 14th January using a
consortium of Japanese contractors. Most of the oil was transferred to small coastal
tankers while the remaining oil-water mixture was pumped into road tankers via a
temporary 1 75-metre causeway constructed to allow access to the wreck from the shore.
In late April, salvors engaged by the tanker owner removed the bow section andassociated debris, which was then transported to Hiroshima Prefecture for scrapping.
Although a proportion of the oil that was lost when the ship broke up dispersed
naturally at sea, patches of heavily emulsified oil ranging in size from 1 to 100 metresin diameter drifted towards the coast. Several hundreds of tonnes of emulsion stranded
at various locations from the Oki Islands, Shimane Prefecture in the west, to Akita
Prefecture in the east, a distance of more than 1 ,000

kilometres covering ten

prefectures. The most severely affected shorelines were those in the immediate vicinityof the bow section, extending 20 kilometres to the north, and those along the northcoast of the Noto peninsula. The shorelines of both Hyogo and Kyoto Prefectures werealso heavily contaminated while those of Niigata, Yamagata and Akita were principally
affected by tarballs, the level of contamination diminishing from severe along parts of
the Niigata coastline to light in Akita.
The wide geographical distribution of oil, which is one of the key characteristics of the
NAKHODKA incident, is the result of two factors. Whereas most major tanker spills
occur close to the coast, the NAKHODKA broke up over 100 kilometres from the coast,
thereby exposing the oil to the vagaries of offshore winds and currents, and bringing alonger stretch of coast under threat from pollution. Secondly, the Medium Fuel Oil
cargo proved to form very stable and persistent water-in-oil emulsions which resisted
physical degradation by wave action at sea, and caused an increase in the volume ofpollutant by a factor of 4-5 since the water content of the emulsions reached over 80%.
The increased persistence of the emulsified oil allowed it to travel great distances.

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OIL SPILL RESPONSE MEASURESThe Maritime Safety Agency (MSA) is the lead government agency for salvage andclean-up operations but looks to the tanker owner to provide equipment and manpower
resources to supplement its own capability. A contract was signed on behalf of thetanker owner with the partly government-funded Japan Marine Disaster Prevention
Centre (MDPC) to organise the clean-up operations using commercial contractors. In
addition, the Petroleum Association of Japan (PAJ) provided coastal booms, skimmers,
portable storage tanks and a number of trained operators. This equipment was used toprotect sensitive areas and to recover floating oil. Electricity generating companies
deployed several kilometres of boom to protect water intakes to seven nuclear power
stations within the affected area.
More than 80 vessels belonging to MSA and the Japan Self Defence Force were engaged
in oil recovery operations. Following a Japanese Government request for assistance, theRussian Ministry of Merchant Marine (MNS) dispatched four vessels equipped with oil
recovery systems to assist MSA. Crane barges chartered by MDPC and by prefecture
governments were comparatively effective at collecting the highly viscous emulsified oilfrom the sea surface using clam-shell buckets. In addition, several hundred fishingboats from eight prefectures were mobilised to collect oil manually into drums.
Helicopters were used to spray a limited amount of dispersant, primarily to deal withoil escaping from the bow section.
Since there was a risk that the bow section would break up before the oil could be
removed, ITOPF recommended that, as a contingency measure, the local offshore
response capability should be supplemented with equipment from the East Asia
Response Ltd (EARL) stockpile in Singapore. Two recovery systems were airlifted to
Osaka and then transported to Mikuni by road, arriving on 13th January. One unit was
installed on a salvage tug and the other on a supply vessel. Both units were deployed in
an attempt to recover heavily emulsified oil off Noto Hanto. The equipment andpersonnel were returned to Singapore on 5th February.
Shoreline clean-up was organised by local fishery associations, prefecture andmunicipal authorities, primarily using manual methods. Most of the oil stranded on the
shoreline had been removed by mid-February. In the five most heavily contaminatedprefectures more than 500,000 man-days were expended on shoreline clean-up. Abouthalf of this effort was provided by volunteers from all over Japan. The remainder of thework-force comprised fishermen, local residents, municipal workers, firemen and the
Self Defence Force. During the period of most intensive clean-up activity towards the4

end of January andearly February, weather conditions were severe with almost
continual strong winds, sleet and snow.
Final clean-up is largely being undertaken by contractors engaged by the municipal
authorities in the removal of tar balls from amenity beaches using a combination oftechniques such as sieving, beach cleaning machines and surf washing. The other main
activity is the removal of viscous water-in-oil emulsions from within the structure oftetrapod sea defences. The difficulty of deciding when to end shoreline cleaning efforts
is a familiar one in any major oil spill, but the issue has arisen more frequently in the
NAKHODKA incident by virtue of the large number of clean-up sites and the different
standards for cleaning applied in different prefectures. By the end of May, allprefectures had declared the clean-up operations to have been completed.
Several large pits were excavated for the temporary storage of the large volumes ofcollected oil, water and sand. The high viscosity and the emulsified nature of thecollected oily waste created enormous problems in terms of both storage and disposal.
In order to reduce the handling and cost of disposing of the water locked up in thewater-in-oil emulsions, attempts were made to break the emulsions with chemicals andheat treatment in temporary storage pits, with varying success. Only the waste
collected in bulk could potentially be treated this way, whereas bagged waste wasdisposed of in toto.
The total quantity of collected waste is estimated to be some 50,000 tonnes, which has
been transported by road, rail and sea to industrial disposal facilities, mainly
incineration plants, all over Japan. The quantities involved overwhelmed the capacityof these facilities, leading to considerable delays for vessels carrying cargoes of oily
waste which had to wait for discharge berths at destination ports. Lightly oiled sandwas buried at the beach margins, while moderately oiled sand was buried at industrial
land fill sites.

COSTS, LOSSES AND COMPENSATIONThis is the first major pollution incident to occur since the 1992 Protocols to the 1969
Civil Liability Convention and the 1971 Fund Convention entered into force. Japan is aparty to the Protocols and has implemented them in its Oil Pollution Compensation
Law. However, since the Russian Federation, the flag state of the NAKHODKA, is aparty to the 1969 Civil Liability Convention and 1971 Fund Convention but not to theProtocols, the tanker owner's limit of liability is governed by the 1969 Civil Liability
Convention. In the case of the NAKHODKA it is approximately 1 .6 million Special
Drawing Rights (SDRs) (about ¥300 million or US$ 2.3 million). Additional
compensation is payable by the International Oil Pollution Compensation Funds (1971Fund and 1992 Fund), up to a total amount of 135 million SDRs (approximately ¥26
billion or US$ 192 million), inclusive of the compensation paid by the tanker owner.
Preliminary estimates of the quantum of potential claims indicate that there is a riskthat the upper limit of the 1992 Fund may be exceeded and, as a consequence, the 1991
and 1992 Funds have, for the moment, set a limit on payments of 60% of any

5substantiated claims.
Claims for clean-up costs as at the end of May were estimated to be in the region of ¥9.5
billion (US$71 million), including ¥2.3 billion (US$ 17 million) in respect of thefishermen's involvement in the clean-up operation, ¥3.9 billion (US$29 million) for theclean-up costs incurred by six of the ten prefectures involved, and a further ¥3.3 billion(US$25 million) for MDPC clean-up contractors' costs.
Claims for the transport and disposal of oily waste are expected to reach ¥2.O billion(US$ 15 million) . The wide distribution of the spilled oil and the proliferation of cleanup operations in each of the affected prefectures is undoubtedly the main cause of thehigh costs for shoreline clean-up and disposal.
Pollution damage claims are anticipated from two main sectors, tourism and fisheries,
but as yet no indication has been given of the likely amounts, partly because until
recently potential claimants have been fully occupied assisting in clean-up operations.
The tourist and fishery sectors are closely linked, not only because visitors are
attracted to this coast to consume fresh seafood, but also because a substantial
proportion of the many guest houses and restaurants are owned by fishermen.
Although the main tourist season
commences in July, the local crab fishery attracts winter visitors and sightseers begin
arriving in greater numbers in Spring.
Claims are anticipated for business interruption to fisheries and some limited claims asa result of contamination of large complex set nets. It is alleged that prices of fish andother marine products were depressed as a result of the spill. On the rocky shores
throughout the affected area naturally occurring edible seaweeds are harvested
commercially and for self-consumption. Harvesting of this seaweed was abandoned forthe season as a result of the spill.
SPILL RESPONSE PROBLEMS AND THEIR RESOLUTION
1. Although Japanese regulations require the tanker owner to undertake clean-up
operations and a contract was signed on the owner's behalf with MDPC, the relatively
low limit of liability in the NAKHODKA case meant that the owner's financial limit
was soon reached. The incident has served to highlight one the problems which can be
faced in those CLC and Fund countries which expect or require the shipowner toparticipate in the clean up. In this case the considerable shortfall between the owner's
limit and the anticipated claims for clean-up costs has been met temporarily by a
substantial loan (¥9 billion) to MDPC from the Government of Japan, pending

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settlement and payment by the IOPC Funds. Similar loans of substantial amounts havebeen made to the prefecture governments within the affected area.
MDPC is jointly funded by government and industry and can respond either under the
direction of MSA or under contract to the spiller. The arrangement whereby MDPC
operates under the terms of a contract with the tanker owner leads to a curious
situation of divided loyalties for MDPC which is a quasi- government organisation.
Once the standard contact with MDPC has been signed, the tanker owner has nocontrol over the appointment by MDPC of subcontractors and associated expenditure.
In future cases involving passing tankers this circumstance is likely to create
reluctance on the part of the tanker owner to enter into what is in effect an open-ended
contract with no safeguards against incurring costs which may be deemed
unreasonable and inadmissible under the terms of the compensation conventions.
2. A striking feature of the NAKHODKA oil spill response, from an international
perspective, has been the enormous volunteer effort to remove oil from contaminatedshorelines. The scale of the public contribution is the greatest in the history of tanker
oil spills since TORREY CANYON in 1967, and reflects the concern generated by the
NAKHODKA incident, throughout Japan. The public reaction also represents a potent
political statement which the government and public authorities were bound toacknowledge. One manifestation of government responsiveness was the deployment of
all available spill response resources, whether appropriate or not, in an effort to collectas much of the spilled oil as soon as possible. Whilst a laudable aim in itself, thisstrategy is not necessarily the most effective and may lead to restricted cost recovery
under the compensation conventions.
The Civil Liability Conventions and the Fund Conventions provide for compensation to
be paid for reasonable measures undertaken to prevent or minimise pollution damage.
The criteria followed for judging whether a claim is admissible are primarily technical.
For example, the scale of the response measures should be in proportion to the size ofthe spill, the expected level of success, and the ability to direct and control operations
effectively. The application of such criteria results in limits being imposed on the typeand extent of oil spill response activity that can be considered reasonable in the context
of compensation payable under the Conventions.
The effectiveness of offshore recovery gradually decreases after oil has been spilled dueto the tendency for oil to spread and become scattered over a wide area. Operations
should be terminated as soon as there are no significant and recoverable amounts of oilremaining at sea, or the amount of oil being recovered will not significantly reduce theimpact on shorelines or sensitive resources.
In February, at a stage when oil had become very widely scattered across the Sea ofJapan, there were over 100 sea-going patrol/oil recovery vessels involved in

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NAKHODKA oil spill response activity, as well as several hundred fishing boats. There
were ships deployed by MSA, the Japan Marine Self-Defence Force (MSDF) , Ministryof Transport, Russian MSN and the tanker owner.
Given the decreasing quantity of oil afloat, there can have been no prospect for utilising
this number and size of craft in reasonable oil pollution preventive measures.
Furthermore, even this number of craft did not succeed in reducing shoreline impact ofoil to any significant degree. This observation applies to most vessels participating in
the offshore response, albeit to varying degrees.
3. The performance of the Russian vessels provided to assist in the offshore oilcollection was poor. Amongst several reasons, the lack of experience of operating inJapanese waters and of working in collaboration with Japanese authorities must havebeen significant. In other countries reliant on close international co-operation, such as
the Baltic countries, frequent exercises are held to overcome the inevitable obstacles
posed by different languages, logistics requirements, operating systems and command
structures.
It is relevant to note here that a meeting of the UNEP Regional Seas Action Plan for
the Protection, Management and Development of the Marine and Coastal Environmentof the Northwest Pacific Region (NOWPAP) will be held in Toyama, 23-25 July 1997.
The member states of NOWPAP are China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, RussianFederation and Taiwan. The aim of the meeting is to promote oil spill preparedness andresponse within the region. A regional contingency plan along with a Memorandum ofUnderstanding is to be developed.
4. The characteristics and behaviour of the oil spilled in the NAKHODKA incident
determined the tactics employed for collecting oil from the sea surface. The
emulsification process transformed the liquid oil into semi-solid lumps which could becollected more effectively and more cheaply with crane barges fitted with clam-shell
buckets than with conventional booms and skimmers. The large quantities of free watercollected with the oil lumps could be easily decanted.
5. The oil recovery systems supplied by EARL consisting of booms and skimmers wereprimarily intended as a contingency measure in case of a second release of fresh, liquid
oil from the bow section. Although no such release occurred, the equipment was
deployed for several days to collect emulsified oil offshore until it became apparent thatthe benefits did not justify the costs involved. The equipment and operating personnel
were promptly demobilised and returned to Singapore. In addition to the point
described under 4. above, it was clear that the EARL personnel had difficulties
communicating and operating with the Japanese crew on the vessels of opportunity(tug & supply vessel) provided for the deployment of EARL equipment.
6. The fact that supplementary EARL resources were considered necessary highlights a
gap in the spectrum of oil spill response equipment provided by the public and private
spill response sectors in Japan. There is a need for small, flexible oil recovery units

8capable of operating in nearshore waters where the room and depth for manoeuvring
may be restricted. Of equal concern is the current lack of trained personnel wellpractised in the skills of operating complex equipment in restricted waters. The
language barrier and logistic considerations makes it unrealistic to rely on foreign
response groups filling this gap in Japan's oil spill response capability.
7. The key to effective response action is good organisation. Although there were large
quantities of equipment and materials available for the spill response, the resourceswere not utilised in a fully co-ordinated manner, with a single entity in overall charge
to implement a coherent strategy. Many of the prefectures instigated their own cleanup operations with little or no attempt to co-ordinate their activities with neighbouring
prefectures or with MDPC. With ten prefectures involved in oil spill response tovarying degrees, a chaotic situation developed and resources were wasted. An
integrated national contingency plan covering all levels of oil spill response would help
to alleviate this problem in the future.
8. Good use was made of the equipment and services provided by PAJ to support theshoreline clean-up effort. However, once the equipment had been deployed anddemonstrated there was a tendency for operating problems to develop after PAJ
personnel had departed from the scene. A programme of equipment exercises tothoroughly familiarise operators with the running and maintenance of PAJ equipment
should help to reduce this problem.
9 . The large volunteer force was mobilised in part as a consequence of the experience
after the Kobe Earthquake when an elaborate volunteer organisation was developed.
Although there are obvious advantages in utilising volunteer labour, there are alsodifficulties to contend with such as variable personal fitness for strenuous physicalwork. It has also sometimes proved difficult to control and direct the work of volunteers
who often reject outside supervision.
10. The cleaning of oiled breakwaters and sea defences often present the problem thatthe oil penetrates deep into the structure leading to the concern that it will act as areservoir for oil leaching out over a period of time. It cannot be considered reasonable tocompletely dismantle sea defences constructed of tetrapods or rocks in order to expose
trapped oil, firstly, because the effects of the oil are unlikely to be prolonged, andsecondly, the costs involved are likely to far exceed the level of claims that short-termleaching might cause.
11. The cleaning of shorelines required an enormous effort since poor access to clean-upsites made it necessary to rely mainly or exclusively on manual labour. Much of themost strenuous work involved bagging and transferring collected oil to and from
temporary storage sites. The key to cost-effective shoreline clean-up, oil transport, anddisposal is to minimise the number of steps in handling collected oily waste. In the
NAKHODKA clean-up operation there was too much double-handling of waste. Earlier
use of 1-tonne flexible containers ('Flecon' bags) to hold the many small plastic bags

9filled at the clean-up sites would have greatly eased the subsequent task oftransporting bagged waste to and from temporary storage sites.
12. At some beach locations excessive quantities of oily beach material wereaccumulated through the use of unsupervised mechanical equipment. At Katano beachnear Kaga City in Isikawa Prefecture over 18,000 m3 of oily sand was collected in thisway. Secondary separation of the collected material was then required in order to avoid
astronomical disposal costs. With careful supervision of the initial beach cleaning these
problems could have been avoided.
13. In the NAKHODKA incident too few disposal options were available for clean-up
managers to consider. There was little or no opportunity to encourage competitive
bidding amongst potential disposal contractors.
Although bagged and bulk waste were carefully segregated during storage, noseparation and recycling of free oil from the bulk waste was achieved. As part of thenational contingency plan review, efforts should be made to identify more economically
viable options for separating oily waste and recycling recovered oil.

CONCLUSIONS
Whereas past spills have typically been small affairs involving exclusively Japaneseinterests, the NAKHODKA oil spill presented Japan with an unfamiliar situation. This
was a major offshore incident involving a foreign tanker owner with no presence orbusiness representation in Japan. No part of the response community, including
maritime lawyers and marine surveyors was prepared for such a big event. No country
can claim to be fully prepared for dealing with a maritime incident of such proportions,but the NAKHODKA incident has highlighted some issues needing to be addressed inorder to improve oil spill preparedness in Japan.
The efforts to collect oil in the open sea were greatly hampered by severe winterweather and sea conditions, and by the wide distribution and fragmentation of the oil.
As a result it proved impossible to prevent or reduce shoreline pollution to any
significant extent. Although some success was achieved with crane barges operating incalm weather the quantities of pollutant recovered were small in percentage terms.
The shoreline clean-up operation was well organised locally and successful in quickly
removing the bulk of the pollutant from the tideline into temporary storage pits.

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However, the lack of plans for an operation on this scale led to temporary storage sites
being overwhelmed and also to multiple handling of collected waste.
The quantity of oil spilled in the NAKHODKA incident was magnified by the formationof stable water-in-oil emulsions. In addition to the sheer volume, the increased viscosityof the emulsified oil created problems in handling, pumping, transporting anddisposing of the collected waste. Only limited success was achieved in attempts to breakwater-in-oil emulsions at temporary -storage sites.
Various parts of local and national contingency arrangements for oil spill response
warrant a thorough review in order to improve the capability in Japan for dealing withmajor pollution incidents in the future. There would be merit in reviewing available oilspill response methods and equipment in order to redefine the optimum selection oftechniques for the conditions prevailing in Japan. Probably the most important aspectof the contingency planning review is to improve the co-ordination of diverse resourcesand organisations to create a proper integration of currently very fragmented response
capabilities.

13 June 1997