March 5, 2009
Kuniaki Sasaki

The Nakhodka Case;
Lessons Learned and Problems to be solved
Outline of the incident
incident
Early in the morning of January 2, 1997, the Russian tanker Nakhodka carrying 19,000kl worth ofgrade C heavy fuel oil for power generation suddenly broke off into two portions while sailing stormy Seaof Japan. The stern part sank while the bow section drifted for five days and stranded on the coastnear Mikuni in the Fukui prefecture.
All of the 31 crew except the captain were rescued by the Japan Coast Guard and Marine SelfDefense Force. However, about 6,240kl out of the 19,000kl total of grade C heavy fuel oil, which
was in the damaged tank, spilled out instantly from the damaged section. The spilt oil reached theshoreline of nine coastal prefectures between Shimane and Akita (except for Toyama) within the next
five to ten days.
Meanwhile, 2,800kl of oil remained and kept spilling out from the bow section which had groundedon the coast at Mikuni town. The spilt oil was recovered by various machines and equipments and put
into temporary pits and drums by a total of over 500,000 people. The recovered volume was about
59,000 tons, which included sand and other debris, was collected in the adjacent ports and otherplaces, and then transported to about twenty disposal facilities widely located around the country bytotal of 65 water going vessels and countless trucks.
Moreover, preparation for extraction work of the large volume of remaining oil in the bow section
brought some extra work such as construction of a temporary causeway between the ground and thewreck. It was decided that the causeway was to be removed after the extraction work wascompleted, which was actually all finished by the end of March 1998 with an agreement with the localfisheries.
In handling the Nakhodka incident, the Maritime Disaster Prevention Center (MDPC) borrowed 9billion JPY from the Government, made temporary payments to contractor, and negotiated with theInternational Oil Pollution Compensation Funds for five years and eight months until being settled,which was August 2002.
Thus, the MDPC played a key role in the Nakhodka incident. From those experiences, I would liketo focus on three categories and introduce relevant problems concerning the oil spill recovery
operations and systems as follows:

Fig 1 January 9
Washed up oil and the bow
section grounded on thecoast ofof Mikuni Town.

1１． Aerial search and the dispatch of oil recovery boats
boats(1) Discovery of massive lumps of spilt oil.
The sea conditions had been so rough since the time of the occurrence of the oil spill that theaccurate location of oil lumps, which should have been drifting on the Sea of Japan were notavailable even from an aircraft. Nevertheless, on January 8th, as the sea condition became calm,
the MDPC started to obtain information about the location and extent of the oil lumps, and finallyfound one of the biggest ones offshore of the Noto Peninsula on January 10th.
Consequently, recovery work of those oil lumps were only done manually by fishing boats, which
was only a small amount. Most of the rest of the oil lumps were washed up on the shore of thenorthern side of Noto Peninsula. Some of the fishermen who were engaged in the recovery
operation later stated that they had collected an oil lump, which was about 70cm thick, by cutting itoff with a knife.

Fig 2 Jan 11The offshore ofNoto Peninsula

いFig 3 Jan 12 The offshore of Saruyama
Promontory. 81 fishermen’s boats manually
collecting the oil lump.

(2) Oil recovery plan and operation by bucket grab hopper barges
The MDPC had had succeeded in the recovery work of massive amounts of weathered oil byusing a grab hopper barge and the deployment of a boom in three different previous incidents
before. From those experiences, the MDPC made arrangements for several bucket grab hopperbarges in the early stages of the Nakhodka incident. On January 11th, one of those barges, theKotobuki arrived into the Port of Fukui and immediately prepared for oil lumps recovery byinstalling a pump for seawater discharge and loaded ocean boom and other preparations. TheMDPC attended a meeting with the Ishikawa Prefectural Government and the local fisheries todiscuss the operation strategy. The Prefectural Government decided to dispatch their research
vessel, the Hakusan, and prepared for loading booms, a blower fan and other equipment on to theship untill midnight that day.
On the morning of January 12th, the grab hopper barges Kotobuki and Hakusan jointly laid aboom on the offshore of the Noto Peninsula and began searching for massive oil lumps but only
recovered some smaller ones. Although it was originally planned to use a large type of boom,
since it was too difficult to be loaded on the vessel, a small type (B-type) of boom was usedinstead. As the result, the volume of oil recovered offshore by the Kotobuki during those twodays on 12th and 13th January was 450 tons. The usage of the boom was not very successful
due to its structural problems and other issues.

2Fig 4 The Kotobuki and Hakusan

Fig 5（3） Lessons learned and problems to be solved
1
Even though it was known that there were massive lumps of oil in advance, they were notcollected by a bucket grab hopper barge or an oil recovery boat.
2
The structure of recovery boats in our hand are unsuitable for highly viscous oil recovery
operations.
3
Further development of techniques of spilt oil recovery with booms is necessary.
4Since the efficiency of a bucket grab hopper barge was not officially known, it was difficult tohave an agreement of increase the usage of the barge.
5It took so long (about three hours) for an aircraft to convey the information to the MDPC
regarding the locations of oil lumps that the information was no longer useful when it wasfinally received.

2(1)

Response to a massive oil drift ashore on the sand beach(The case of Shioya and Katano sand beaches
beaches,es, Kaga City)
We observed oil drifted ashore landward across the intertidal zone due to rough weather
The sand beach between Shioya and Katano of Kaga City, Ishikawa Prefecture, which is about
3.8km long, has abundant vegetation. During the stormy night of January 8th, a massive amountof spilt oil washed up on this particular beach. The next morning the sea condition became calmand oil recovery work was done by dozens of heavy machineries such as backhoe and otherequipment. The collected oil was either buried into dug holes on the beach or piled up by being
moved around by those machines for some time, which made the beach sand mixed up with lotsof oil. Therefore, a large number of volunteers had to manually separated the oil from the sandand collected it later on. The volume of collected oiled sand was about 5,200 tons, which waslater burnt or disposed of in a landfill site. The shoreline, over several years of observation, wasshown to be severely eroded. In the future, in order to deal with massive oil spills washed ashoreon the beach like in this case, we need to plan and examine methods of collecting it.

3Fig 6
July , 1997
About six months later

Fig 8 Jan 12
Shioya beachKatano beach

Shioya beach
Shioya beachFig 7 Jan 8(2) Lessons learned and problems to be solved
1 The usage of heavy machinery caused a massive amount of sand to be mixed with the oil.
2 The geographical features of the shore were changed by being moved landward due todamage of vegetation by heavy machinery.
3 A massive amount of beach sand was contaminated with oil, which was wasted and disposed of.
However, there is not enough disposal methods or facilities for oily waste.
4 Examination of the most suitable recovery methods--deployments of suction tanker trucks, beach cleaning machines, and etc.

3Countermeasures to the remaining oil inside the bow section that washed ashore onon thecoast (at(at Mikuni Town on January 7th.)
7th.)
It was estimated that about 2,800kl of heavy oil remained inside the bow section which drifted
across the Sea of Japan and beached on the shore at Mikuni Town and the remaining oil had been
spilling out in accordance with the destruction of the hull, so extraction of this oil was necessary..
However, due to the adverse sea conditions, the extraction operation was readily seen to be bothdemanding and time consuming.
It was under these circumstances that the insurance company initiated surveys and invited tenders,
but this response was so lax that the Japanese Government decided to take forcible measures andordered the MDPC to execute the task.
Then, on the shore side, a temporary causeway was constructed to allow access to the bow
section from the shore in order to carry out the extraction work regardless of weather conditions.
(1) From the seaside
Work vessels started the operation by opening a hole on the bottom plate of the Nakhodlka, fromwhich they pumped out the remaining oil and collected it into tankers aside.
The extractionwork was done by a joint venture of two salvage companies for three times in total during calm sea
conditions. A total of 2,800kl of oil-water mixture was collected.

4Fig 9During calm sea conditions, theextraction operation was done allnight long.

(2) From the temporary causeway
On the shore side, a temporary causeway was constructed to reach the bow section of the shipfrom the shore, which was 130m long, in order to carry out the extraction work regardless of thesea conditions. This construction ended up using a total of 58,000 tons of large and small sizes ofrocks and tetra pods. When originally planned, it was expected to be constructed within a week,
but soil and sand were washed out and eroded by waves, and it took 26 days from January 15th
through February 9th for the causeway to be finished.
This construction work was done by a joint venture of seven companies from the JapaneseDredging and Reclamation Engineering Association. When this causeway was constructed, thesuction work was almost already in its last stages. Consequently, only about 380kl of oil wasremoved from the bow section from the shore side. Nevertheless, removal of this causeway laterran into difficulties and all the site work was completed in October, when 95% of abandoned rocks
were collected. Then the MDPC started negotiating with the local government. It was March 1998
when the government agreed to the completion of the work. Upon the removal of the temporary
causeway, it faced problems of handling the large amount of oiled rocks, irremovable rocks, andfisheries’ anger and so on.
(3) Lessons learned and recommendations for the future
1In Japan, we have had several experiences of tanker incidents that they drifted ashore withlarge amount of oil in the tanks and, it was common manner to extract oil by hose line
installed from wrecked to work vessel brought alongside.
2
In the case of construction of temporary causeway, it is required to clarify every aspect ofplanning, implementation procedure, matter of concern to the parties, demolishment andfinancial matters by all means..

Fig 10The extraction
extraction
causeway

workfromthetemporary

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