New Zealand oil spill response strategy - Maritime New Zealand

The three-tiered system provides each level with the opportunity to call on the others for assistance
(through a process of controlled escalation), while requiring contingency plans to be developed with all
the necessary information for an effective response.
The concept of contingent capability in New Zealand means that each region has been equipped with
sufficient resources to deal with the smaller spills they would normally experience, while still being able
to escalate the response by calling on nationally held stocks and expertise for major incidents. In turn,
when the scale of a response is beyond the national capacity, New Zealand can call on Australian (and
other) resources through a mutual aid Memorandum of Understanding or other signatories to the
OPRC to assist. The system has the flexibility to accommodate the extra resources available from
overseas.
Sensitive Coastal Resources
As a nation, New Zealanders have a strong historical connection to the marine environment. The
coastline contains many sensitive resources to which New Zealand attaches great importance, for their
biological, physical, social, cultural, economic or intrinsic values.
It is the responsibility of regional councils and relevant industries to identify in their contingency plans
those areas most threatened by potential marine oil spills. The regional councils are required to set
priorities for protection of sensitive areas and identify the response needs for these locations in
consultation with key stakeholders.
Regional councils are also required to produce maps detailing environmentally sensitive areas as part
of their ongoing regional contingency planning development and maintenance program. This
information will be collated by Maritime New Zealand and incorporated into a GIS database, the Oil
Spill Information Management System (OSIMS), which will be made available along with other response
decision tools to supplement the National Plan.
Public Expectations
In the event of an oil spill, the New Zealand public rightly expects that all reasonable steps will be
taken to minimise the effects on the marine environment. Even small marine spills may impact on
amenity values and disrupt coastal activities, so the development of an effective response strategy is
of paramount importance. Nevertheless it is essential to carry out a net benefit analysis of the
response options for any spill. In some circumstances, the option of ‘doing nothing’ may be the best
response option even though this may be at variance to public opinion.
No nation presently maintains the capacity to deal with all possible incidents. New Zealand, like other
countries, relies on international assistance for spills and formal agreements to ensure access to these
international resources form a fundamental part of this strategy.
Should a major spill occur, New Zealand’s geographic isolation means it will be some time before
significant resources could be mobilised from overseas, so New Zealand must maintain an adequate
domestic first response capability.
Given the proximity to the coast of most maritime activity, it would be unreasonable to expect
responders to be able to prevent all or even some oil from reaching the shore in every case.
Response activity on impacted coastal areas must cease at some point, and depending on the
stakeholder perspective, there may be wide ranging opinions on defining ‘How clean is clean?’
Deciding when the clean-up operation ceases will be done in consultation with local interests based on
the principles of net environmental benefit assessment.
The highest likelihood of oil spills is in commercial areas such as ports and harbours, where
established communities are also likely to be found in adjacent areas. There are significant public
health and safety issues associated with oil spills, and the welfare of the community, industry
personnel and responders must always be considered as the highest priority in both planning and
response.
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