Workshop On Oil Spill Preparedness and Response Ends

A workshop to exercise and test the current National Oil Spill Contingency Plan (NOSCP), and build on the previous work of improving and developing Ghana's capacity to respond to oil spills has ended at Amasaman in the Greater Accra region.

About 60 participants attended the four-day workshop which provided training to the relevant national authorities on contingency planning, the use of Incident Management Systems (IMS), Net Environmental Benefit Analysis (NEBA) and Incident Response Communications.

The workshop reviewed the lessons learned from this and recent exercises and provided insight to the relevant national authorities on how to improve the NOSCP, based on the results of the exercise.

The training programme formed part of the Global Initiative for West, Central and Southern Africa (GI WACAF) Project--a co-operation between the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association (IPIECA), the global oil and gas industry association for environmental and social issues.

GI WACAF, launched in 2006, is jointly funded by the IMO and 7 Oil Companies (BP, Chevron, ENI, ExxonMobil, Shell, Total and Woodside) through IPIECA to enhance the capacity of countries to prepare for and respond to marine oil spills.

Through workshops, training courses, seminars and deployment exercises the Project, in collaboration with the national authorities in charge of oil spill response and in partnership with local business units, carries out its mission of strengthening the national oil spill response capability of 22 countries in Western, Central and Southern Africa.

Addressing participants at the end of the workshop, Mr John Pwamang, Acting Executive Director, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), expressed satisfaction at the progress made in efforts at developing Ghana's capacity to respond to oil spills.

Mr Pwamang pledged the commitment of EPA to the Action Plan that was developed at the workshop and commended IMO and IPIECA for the support and direction being provided.

Source: ISD (Mawutordzi Abissath & G.D. Zaney)

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