Major concerns over oil project

Published on Tuesday 6 March 2007 03:45

SOMETIME this year, a decision will be made regarding the licensing of ship-to-ship transfers of crude petroleum on an industrial scale in the Firth of Forth. Though Scotland faces a barrage of environmental issues that must be resolved - from building the Highland electricity transmission line to approving wind farms - the most urgent is the use of the Forth for oil operations.

Scotland is not new to the oil business or its risks, from the Piper Alpha disaster to the blowout in the Ekofisk field, which leaked 81 million gallons of crude into the North Sea. By and large, the industry has been safety conscious and the risks have been acceptable relative to the economic gains received. Nevertheless, we should take nothing for granted.

The use of the Forth as a location for ship-to-ship oil transfers will involve tankers from the Baltic pumping Russian crude into bigger tankers for onward delivery. This process is called "lightering" and is common in the Gulf of Mexico (where oil is transfered from large to small ships) because today's giant tankers are often too big to dock at shore-based facilities.

The problem regarding lightering in the Forth is twofold. First, the agency legally responsible for deciding if such oil transfers are permissible is a private company, Forth Ports plc. This arrangement may have been acceptable when Forth Ports was a public body, but it results in a clear conflict of interest now that the company is privately owned and has a financial stake in ships using local waters.

Second, the normal operating rules for lightering in the Gulf dictate that the ship-to-ship oil transfers are conducted some 60 miles from shore. This minimises the danger of an accidental oil spill coming ashore. In the Forth, the lightering will be very close to land indeed, thus heightening the risks to an unacceptable level.

The company bidding to do the lightering in the Forth is SPT Maritime, a Norwegian-American firm with a reputation for being safety conscious. Nevertheless, SPT has had accidents while lightering in the Gulf of Mexico. Such accidents have been small, but if they took place in a confined anchorage such as the Forth, the impact on the local environment would be catastrophic. It is significant that SPT has not sought to do its lightering in a Norwegian fiord.

Forth Ports should hand over its role in this matter to a public body and a more transparent safety review should be conducted. Preferably, such a review should insist that any lightering takes place much further from shore. We should not treat the oil industry as an enemy. On the other hand, the industry must live by the highest of ethical and professional standards.