Oil spill accidents have to be prevented in advance

By Dr. Sakari Kuikka
     
      The increase in oil shipments in the Gulf of Finland is a risk factor for Finland that has grown largely beyond our control.
      Russia is shipping an ever-greater share of its oil exports through the politically unruffled waters of the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland.
      Before very long, the flow of energy westwards will be complemented by an undersea gas pipeline, which will almost certainly be a better solution from the environmental perspective than yet more growth in the number of vessels plying this stretch of water.
     
By all accounts, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) is unable through its own regulations to do anything about the risks of oil shipments that would alleviate the Finnish concerns.
      The area has been granted PSSA status, which means it is seen as a particularly sensitive sea area, but this alone is not enough to reduce the risks of a major accident.
      The IMO is not capable of creating rules that would take account of the enormous volume of ships in the Gulf, the rocky and shallow bottom profile of the waters, and the occasionally very difficult ice conditions that prevail here, all of which conspire to create an exceptionally potent cocktail of risk.
     
One problem is that hitherto nobody has come up with an overall strategy for Finland that would start from those few levers of influence that we can pull.
      The strategy should lean on the tough rules of the business world, but at the same time the process should be supported by scientific means and by making use of the potential of environmental agencies to bring into the public eye those things that the foreign policy officials cannot.
     
The first step is to draw up proper scientific estimates of what the aggregate bill for an oil catastrophe would be, and to whom the various items on the bill would be addressed.
      Some of the damage would naturally go uncompensated - for example the loss in value of real estate and coastal recreation opportunities.
      Then again, there are certain things that clearly can  be included. For example, it would probably be necessary to shut down the nuclear reactors at Loviisa if a major spill were to occur off the coast there.
      In such a case, the bill would start to tot up very quickly, and there would naturally also be significant knock-on losses for other branches of commerce and industry.
     
We also urgently need an assessment of "just how clean is clean" in any clear-up operations in the wake of an accident in the Gulf of Finland.
      The level of water purity should be set such that all species that are sensitive to and threatened by the effects of oil should be protected with a strong degree of confidence.
      There are no other bodies of brackish water like this to be found, and the area contains a great number of genetically unique populations.
     
There must be calculations of how much the clean-up costs depend on the size of the spill and the extent to which the coastline is fouled by oil.
      The maximum credible bill is inevitably going to be a great deal larger than that for example in the case of the Prestige, the tanker that went down in 2002 off the Galician coast of Spain.
      In that instance, the costs were measured in the billions of euros, even though the vessel sank far from the coasts of Spain and France.
     
The size of the bill in the case of an accident in the Gulf of Finland is hoisted upwards by the very nature of the coastline hereabouts: the number of offshore islands and the jagged pattern of bays and headlands makes the overall length of coastline which would be affected that much greater than in other parts of the world.
      Furthermore, the coasts of Southern Finland often have large reedbeds, where the oil gets trapped in a very different manner from the constant washing of tidal beaches abutting oceans.
     
The bottom line is that our splendid and unique coastal region on the Gulf of Finland is just about the worst imaginable concentration of bio- and geodiversity you could ask for in the case that an oil accident takes place.
      Since the costs of clearing up after any accident are going to be vast, one would have thought that the major insurers and others who will pick up the tab would have a considerable interest in making sure accidents do not happen.
      Even if the IMO are not in a position to issue specific orders for traffic in the Gulf of Finland, the insurance companies are not bound by any such conservative constraints.
      They could insist on the level of training and competency for crews sailing in these waters, and they could if they wished demand that every tanker passing through the Gulf should take on a qualified pilot at their own expense.
     
Finland must now start pushing this sort of policy with determination.
      We have to set in motion a fully-funded and multidisciplinary research programme that generates a comprehensive body of biological, economic, actuarial, legislative, logistical, and transport-risk-related studies.
      With these to hand, the insurance companies and others who are likely to be footing the bill if something happens can be made to see where their best interests lie.
      The next stage after that will require an unholy alliance between the politicians and the environmental organisations to carry the message forward to the international arenas of politics and business.
      All this has to be done in advance - being wise after the event when the oil is washing onshore will provide no comfort to anyone.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 31.3.2009
     
     
The author of the article, Dr. Sakari Kuikka, is Professor in Fisheries Science at the University of Helsinki's Department of Biosciences.
     


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Tanker runs aground in Gulf of Finland - major environmental disaster averted (12.2.2007)
  Police detain captain of ship suspected of oil leak in Naantali (31.3.2009)
  New Russian oil terminal opens in Vysotsk, near Vyborg (18.6.2004)
  Russian Port of Ust-Luga to increase risk of oil catastrophe in Gulf of Finland (7.10.2008)
  Gulf of Finland an increasingly important conduit to the West for Russia (26.5.2006)

Links:
  Gulf of Finland (Wikipedia)