Actions against Parties Responsible for Oil Spills

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Transport (Assoc Prof Dr Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim) (for the Minister for Transport): Mdm Speaker, MOT and MPA take a serious view of any oil spills in Singapore waters. Under the Prevention of Pollution of the Sea Act (EPSA), MPA will take the necessary enforcement measures to bring the responsible parties to task if investigations require that an oil spillage resulted from a culpable act or an omission under the Act. Depending on the circumstances of each case, the responsible parties may be prosecuted. Such offences carry a fine of up to $1 million, imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or both.

Most recently, MOT and MPA have worked with various stakeholders to take swift action in cleaning up the oil spillages caused by the collisions of three vessels on 29 January 2014, 30 January and 10 February 2014. MPA is conducting thorough investigations to determine the circumstances leading to the collision and the subsequent oil spillages, and will take appropriate actions against the responsible parties.

In accordance with Singapore's international maritime obligations, MPA submits its marine safety investigation reports to the International Maritime Organization (IMO). MPA also shares the findings of the investigations and the lessons learnt from such investigations with the shipping community. MPA will continue to reinforce the importance of preventive measures so as to minimise the risks of such incidents.

I have three supplementary questions. I thank the Parliamentary Secretary for saying that the reports will be given to the shipping community. What about them being made public as well so that there will be better cooperation between, say, MPA and the volunteer nature activists who have been down on the ground looking at what is happening?

Secondly, does MPA have rapid environment monitoring response teams to conduct Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) on the marine habitats? The press releases seem to show that whilst the ships have been contained and

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there seems to be no harm to the public, there is no response or no indication of what it does to the marine coastal environment.

Lastly, the fact that three collisions happened in a span of about a couple of weeks: does it mean that our waterways are stretched beyond their sustainable capacity, and so would MPA consider using other methods beyond dispersants? As I understand it, a study showed that this method where oil and dispersants are mixed together is actually 52 times more toxic when combined. Is MPA doing any other studies to overcome this kind of problems?

Madam, I thank the Member for the questions. Firstly, I would like to share with the Member that every incident is reported to the IMO, so members of the public can keep track of the developments through the IMO. Secondly, we work very closely not only with IMO, but with other organisations and countries that also promote marine life and looking at the environment. So, I want to assure the Member that we certainly would take that into account.

We want to not only keep our waters safe, but also keep our waters clean. It is most important that we keep the waterways safe so that there will not be any incidents that will affect marine life.

I would like to assure the Member that we have the Port Operation Control Centre (POCC) which advises vessels on how they can safely navigate in our waters. For all the instances that we have, the POCC has been able to provide advice to the vessels involved. Even for the three recent collisions that we had last month and early this month, we were able to provide advance traffic information to the vessels.

I would like to assure the Member that while investigations are on-going, we have taken interim measures. First, we have conducted briefings to the shipping community to reinforce the importance of safety of navigation in Singapore waters. We had the first briefing on 13 February. We are also promulgating the Port Marine and Shipping Circulars to the shipping and hovercraft communities, emphasising the importance of navigational safety and maintaining vigilance while navigating. The POCC also broadcasts messages to these vessels at any point in time, when necessary, to remind them of safety aspects while navigating. At the same time, we are working with a few organisations and countries to develop a safe passage guide for all mariners navigating in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. These efforts will make our waters safer for navigation and we will keep on bringing home the message

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that safety is key. As soon as our investigation findings are ready, we will share it with the shipping community.