Securing South Africa’s natural environment from oil spills
The Interim IMORG helps to prepare the country for a variety of maritime incidents
The Interim Incident Management Organisation (IMORG), a virtual organisation chaired by the Department of Transport with SAMSA as the co-chair and secretariat, is South Africa’s preparedness forum for joint government and industry response to oil spills within South Africa’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
It was launched in 2017, as a deliverable of the Operation Phakisa Oil and gas laboratory B1 initiative for “joint government – industry emergency drills”. Imorg’s membership is drawn broadly from across various sectors of society inclusive of State departments, private sector industries as well as nongovernmental institutions.
According to Captain Ravi Naicker, SAMSA Senior Manager and co-chair, and Project Manager of the Interim IMORG, the structure will remain “interim,” until the Marine Oil Pollution preparedness response cooperation Bill is promulgated. The Bill is currently following Parliamentary processes for enactment. Public comments were submitted in August 2023.
Capt. Naicker says the current focus of the Interim IMORG is on oil spills but in the future, it will ramp up to an all-hazard approach. He says, among other issues, the structure identifies primary roles of government and industry contributing towards the preparedness of the country with effective and efficient management of maritime incidents such as oil spills offshore.
Its specific objective involves the staging of joint emergency response drills to prepare the country for a variety of incidents and uses the Incident Management System (IMS) as its preferred response model “for effective and efficient use and deployment of the available resources, both human and equipment, for all types of incidents, including marine pollution”.
At-sea exercises:
From a project management perspective, according to Capt. Naicker, the at-sea exercises conducted periodically at selected locations across the coastline are important for the country’s sharpened state of readiness. From a South African perspective, according to the IMORG, he says the logic behind the initiative is simple. Increased activity on the South African coastline of over 3 900km (including the coastline around the Prince Edwards Islands) demands the country to be ready to attend to any emergency that might occur along its pristine coast.
Current estimates of shipping traffic in the three oceans around South Africa are that as many as 30 000 vessels sail through here annually, with many of them laden with an excess of 30-million deadweight-tonnage of crude oil.
“A large-scale oil spill could potentially have catastrophic consequences on the marine environment. There is also offshore oil and gas exploration and bunkering activities, therefore South Africa needs to ensure that while it seeks economic stability and prosperity, it also ensures the protection of its natural biodiversity.
“To this end South Africa has adopted international best practice in incident management and is proactively and continuously preparing to manage marine pollution incidents effectively, ensuring that the appropriate resources and stakeholders are mobilised quickly – and important and timeous decisions made,” says Capt. Naicker.
The IMORG will arrange and conduct the following:
• Tabletop exercises - Table top exercises involve discussion of simulated scenarios by key personnel in an informal setting.
• Drills - A drill is a coordinated, supervised activity usually employed to validate a specific function or capability in a single organisation or agency.
• Functional exercises - Functional exercises are designed to validate and evaluate capabilities, multiple functions and/or sub-functions, or interdependent groups of functions. • Full-scale exercises - Full-scale exercises are typically the most complex and resource-intensive type of exercise. They may involve multiple agencies, organisations and jurisdictions, and can validate many facets of preparedness.
Among the IMORG guiding tools with the exercise is the country’s National Oil Spill Contingency Plan (NOSCP) and annexes that include the wildlife response plan and the IMS manual and handbook.
Capt. Vernon Keller, a deputy Chief Operations Officer at SAMSA, adds: “The training exercises that we conduct periodically and consistently provide an opportunity for South Africa to build capacity necessary to effectively respond in cases of incidents and disasters and the Imorg’s efforts to institutionalise the IMS response model.
“To have an effective response, it is critical that the responders are fully trained and certified competent on the Incident Management System. Additionally, it becomes important that the country mobilise resources and conduct exercises to assess its response in terms of efficiency and effectiveness.”
Incident Management System (IMS)
Training on the globally acclaimed and International Maritime Organisation (IMO) approved Incident Management System (IMS) is conducted by specialists in the field, consisting of three modules: IMS 100, 200 and 300, featuring a desk-top classroom-type engagement of delegates.
Many of the countries on the continent and small island States in the Western Indian Ocean have also adopted IMS as a response model.
The institutionalisation of IMS is one of the key objectives of the IMORG. Thus far five national exercises have been conducted with many government and industry officials completing the IMS to 300 training. A fullscale deployment exercise to test the NOSCP was completed in May 2022. The IMORG strives to work with the findings of the exercise. Some of the key elements are IMS function specific training, oil spill courses and dispersant policy finalisation, to list but a few.
The full-scale deployment exercise was funded by the Benguela Current Convention (BCC). The IMORG creates a platform to seek funding from international organisations for training and development relating to IMORG initiatives, both nationally and regionally.