The Mother of all oil spills occured in 1991 during the Gulf War, when an estimated world-record 6-8 million barrels of Kuwaiti oil poured into the Arabian Gulf, and was worst-case-scenario experience that proved valuable and enduring to Saudi Aramco.

Oil continued spilling into the waterway from multiple sources for months, and nobody could turn off the tap. Eventually, Saudi Aramco got the better of it.
Having faced down the Gulf Spill, the company has demonstrated that its comprehensive global oil-spill prevention and response program is not only sound, but effective. And the company is confident that it is wellprepared to respond forcefully should another such crisis loom in the future.
During the 1991 Gulf Oil Spill crisis, the company’s Oil Spill Response Team (OSRT), totaling hundreds of employees and countless others, managed to recover more than a million barrels of spilled oil and sharply minimised the beach-sliming impact of sticky hydrocarbons that eventually washed ashore. The oil-spill plan worked impressively.
Today, without a trained eye, you can hardly tell any oil ever breached the Kingdom’s Gulf coast back in ’91, and the affected marine ecosystems have fully recovered or are well on their way back to teeming normalcy.
No matter how black the aftermath of a major oil spill may seem, Mother Nature eventually tends to renew the insulted earth and its life forms.
Helping mother nature
Yet, Saudi Aramco’s policy is to keep Mother Nature’s job to an absolute minimum, as much as is humanly.possible, by preventing oil spills in the first place.
This is because the effects of oil damage have the potential to he severe and long-lasting. Saudi Aramco policy commits its response to any company-caused spills but also offers its full assistance in any incident involving a non-Aramco entity, under certain circumstances.
Considering that more than half of all oil transported in the world comes through the Arabian Gulf, and that crude from Saudi Aramco makes up 50 per cent of the volume shipped through the narrow Strait of Hormuz at the Gulf’s southern end, oil-spill vigilance is necessarily a full-time job.
Khalid D. Al-Harbi, Regional Oil Spill Coordinator for the Arabian Gulf, says minimising the threat of oil-tanker spills is one of the Terminal Department’s key responsibilities.
“A key part of our program is a comprehensive shipinspection report . ...For example, there are certain special criteria for ships over 25 years old and for ships that have been involved in pollution incidents in the past,” Al-Harbi said. “Ships with major problems won’t be allowed to berth again at Saudi Aramco facilities before tough requirements are met to make sure they don’t pose any risk to company facilities or the country’s environment.”
Khalid M. Al-Dukeer, port captain of the Terminal Pilotage Operations Division (T POD) at Ras Tanura, oversees the Arabian Gulf and Red Sea Regional Oil Spill Coordinators as well as Tankers Inspections and Acceptance.
Al-Harbi said his oil-spill team has a lot of resources available in his region, including 14,000 meters of oilcorralling booms, two skimmer boats and two dedicated dispersant-spraying planes from Aviation based at Saudi Aramco’s air terminal in Dammam.
Fortunately, despite a very active petroleum industry in the region, the historically assessed risk of major or intermediate oil spills in the Gulf is relatively low compared to other areas of the world.
However, the region still has experienced a few catastrophic incidents, including the 1991 debacle, when oil flowed from the sabotaged Kuwaiti Sea Island Terminal complex and several sunken tankers in the first Gulf War. In 1983, during the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq blew up several drilling platforms, causing the Nowruz oil field spill, which released nearly 850,000 barrels of crude into Gulf waters-three times as much as was spilled by the Exxon Valdez in Alaska in March 1989.
But the vast majority of Gulf spills over the years have been tiny and relatively benign, with 85 per cent comprising inadvertent discharges of less than 50 barrels.
Complicating the scenario is the fact that the shallow, narrow Gulf makes water circulation very slow, causing spills to take a long time to dissipate, and high atmospheric temperatures quicken evaporation of lighter hydrocarbons, causing heavier crude fractions to sink and potentially foul seabed ecosystems. So, in response operations, speed is king.
1 million barrels saved
Despite the extreme difficulty of organizing any response during the 1991 spill, when a war was booming nearby, Saudi Aramco, with the help of many government agencies as well as foreign, national and international organisations, completed a large-scale oil removal and recovery operation in six months.
More than 1.7 million barrels of oil-saturated water were then skimmed from the Gulf surface, allowing the ultimate recovery of more than a million barrels of oil-world records both.
“In an oil-spill emergency, the action of each person in the company’s spill-response team in the affected area, and sometimes worldwide, will determine how much oil is _ ultimately spilled and how much impact that oil will have on the environment and company facilities,” said Global Oil Spill Coordinator Saleh O. El-Balawi. “Therefore, it is an essential part of my job to ensure that I make the right decisions, act at the right times and disseminate the right information to concerned people as quickly as possible throughout the company.”
While Saudi Aramco’s policy emphasises the prevention of oil spills, it acknowledges that they can and do occur.
With that in mind, the company’s oil-spill program is exhaustively detailed, prescribing prevention, response and cleanup actions and measures; a comprehensive roster with contact numbers of key persons company-wide; specific duties for every team and leader; comprehensive documentation requirements during and after an incident; legal considerations; training; and countless other components.
Muhammad A. Saber, Regional Oil Spill Coordinator for the Red Sea, said hundreds of people are involved in the company’s oil-spill program. “In a big event, we inject more people-from established response teams companywide, from affected areas, from the Marine Department, Aviation, you name it,” he said. “We now have access to all company departments, and established procedures and teams make sure we have all the support we need.”
Saber said the Red Sea region encompasses a very wide area, stretching from Jizan in the south to Duba in the north and including major seaports such as those in Jiddah, Rabigh and Yanbu‘. Available spill equipment in the area includes the company’s Midyan pollution-control boat, which is equipped with skimming systems, oil booms and storage for recovered oil. Other equipment is stocked at each respective terminal.
“The company’s global oil-spill response program is very extensive,” said Richard Ford, Regional Oil Spill Coordinator for all oil-spill emergencies in the Western Hemisphere.
“Wherever Vela’s tankships currently operate in the hemisphere, we have provisions for and equipment available nearby for responding to any oil spill. We are also fully capable of providing support and backup for any other Saudi Aramco oil spill elsewhere in the world, if called upon in an emergency, including deploying both personnel and equipment.”
Mohammad Al-Gilani, Vela’s Pollution Control and Environmental Engineer, said, “Vela’s preparedness and readiness program for responding to tanker emergencies is an integral part of the company’s global oil spill response program.”
Vela developed the Emergency Response Plan (ERP) for its fleet as a substitute for the Shipboard Oil Pollution Emergency Response Plan. The ERP is a combined document that fulfills the requirements of Regulation 26 of Annex 1 of MARPOL (the international convention for the prevention of pollution from ships at sea) and satisfies the requirements for the development of the Vessel Response Plan under the U. S. Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90). Vela’s ERP has been designed to work in conjunction with Saudi Aramco’s Global Oil Spill Contingency Plan and Regional Contingency Plans to provide for coordinated effort and, swift actions to respond to oil spills from Vela-owned vessels anywhere in the world.
This interaction between Saudi Aramco Oil Spill Contingency Plans and Vela’s ERP provides Vela with the ability to use Saudi Aramco’s Oil Spill Response Resources to respond to any oil spill effectively, regardless of its location and magnitude, Al-Gilani said.
The most intense focus of the overall program is on response. Because response to a spill depends on its magnitude, Saudi Aramco classifies then in three categories:
• Minor spills-Less than 50 barrels in size and judged to have a minimal impact.
• Medium spills-Between 50 and 5,000 barrels and judged to carry the potential of substantial impact.
• Major spills-Greater than 5,000 barrels and carrying the potential of severe impact.
In addition to the classification of oil spills, two broad types of oil in a spill help determine response: persistent oil, which is heavy crude and fuel oil that tends to remain in the environment and is difficult to clean up; and non-persistent oil, which is light crude and refined products that are easier to clean up but typically more toxic and thus can potentially cause severe environmental damage.
Contingency plans are designed around a three-tiered approach to response:
• Tier 1 Response-Involves using local resources and covers operational-type spills.
• Tier 2 Response-Involves large spills, where resources from other nearby organizations can be mobilized.
• Tier 3 Response-Involves incidents that require substantial resources, potentially necessitating acquisition of resources from distant sites.
The Marine Pollution Control Unit of Saudi Aramco’s Marine Department has the primary responsibility to respond to offshore oil spills in coordination with company response teams. The Marine organisation owns and maintains the largest oil-spill response material stockpile and fleet in the company. Also, the department’s professional divers are heavily involved in oil-spill prevention and continuous inspection of underwater pipelines.
Saudi Aramco owns and maintains a massive amount of equipment for oil-spill response. However, should additional equipment be required for a specific incident, the company has numerous outside sources for material, equipment or labor.
Global coordinator El-Balawi said: “All oil spills are reported, and if a spill  is major, all company resources are utilised, such as the activation of Oil Spill Response Teams, response plans and the company’s latest oil-pollution-control equipment-in Ras Tanura and Tanajib for the Arabian Gulf, and in areas such as Duba, Yanbu`, Rabigh, Jiddab and Jazan for the Red Sea.”
Containment and recovery is the company’s primary option in dealing with oil spills. But, in cases where this is infeasible, the company also uses chemical dispersants, which help prevent further incursion of an oil slick into sensitive areas.
By policy, dispersants are not applied directly over environmentally sensitive areas or over water depths of less than 10 m (30 feet), and their use is judged on the basis of net environmental benefit (potential dispersant damage vs. potential oil damage).
Pollution-control equipment is staged at all of the company’s areas of operation on the Red Sea coast in the Kingdom’s west, and along the Arabian Gulf on the eastern coast, and it can be moved cross-country in either direction should the need arise.
Major equipment
A total of 60 oil skimmers and 24,776 m of containment booms are stored at Ras Tanura, Tanajib, Jiddah, Rabigh, Yanbu‘, Duba and Jizan. New equipment has been ordered for Yanbu‘. Oil recovery rates for skimmers range from 125-155 barrels per hour to 175-930 barrels per day (bpd).
Other pieces of major equipment owned by Saudi Aramco include:
• Air Tractor 802-Two of these dispersant-spraying aircraft are stationed in Dammam on the Gulf coast. An Air Tractor can fly from Dammam to the Red Sea in six hours. The planes have a tank capacity of 800 US gallons of dispersant; an optimum speed while spraying of 120 knots (140 miles per hour); maximum flight time of one hour when fully loaded; and a 24.4-meterwide (80-ft) spray path.
• Midyan Vessel - Designed to cover Saudi Aramco operations on the Red Sea, this 70-meter-long (210-ft) pollution-control vessel has two built-in skimming systems that can recover up to 100 cubic meters (3,500 cu ft) of oil per hour. It also has 2,500 m (8,200 ft) of oil booms onboard and a 3,500-barrel tank for recovered oil.
• Ain Dar-1 through Ain Dar-8-These eight pollution-control boats deployed on both coasts of the Kingdom have oil-recovery rates ranging from 108-7,200 bpd.
• Slop-receiving barges-The company owns five slopreceiving barges with carrying capacities ranging from 6,000-20,000 barrels.
• Boom deployment vessels-Four specialized vessels are company-owned, including the Mirsal-1 through Mirsal-3, each with an 8,618-kilogram (18,960pound) load capacity, and the Zodiac sea craft.
• Absorbent booms-The company owns 49,044 m (160,760 ft) of absorbent booms.
To enhance the company’s readiness to fight oil spills, specialised training is conducted for all personnel in spill-related organisations. Company-wide, a total of 842 employees have attended these specialised courses -532 trained under the auspices of Global Oil Spill Coordination and 310 by the Marine Department.
Two oil-spill response courses are held annually, covering a wide array of spill-related topics, such as strategy, contingency planning, priorities and response options.
Each course is followed by a one-day exercise to train members of the Oil Spill Response Teams at different company sites along the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf coasts. Internationally recognised experts in the field of oil-spill response conduct the courses and facilitate the exercises.
The last major course and exercise were conducted in September-October 2002 at Yanbu‘. A total of 17 courses have been conducted since 1992 by the Global Oil Spill Coordination Division at various Saudi Aramco terminals on both coasts. In addition, an estimated 20 courses were conducted by Marine in the last five years.
In addition to company personnel, concerned government organisations and other industries are also invited to take part in these courses and exercises.
The Global Oil Spill Coordination organisation has also worked with its counterparts in Saudi Aramco’s subsidiaries and affiliates worldwide to conduct oilspill drills, table-top exercises and hands-on training at various locations.
The Oil Spill Committee
At the top of the company’s oil-spill con- tingency and response network is the Oil Spill Committee (OSC), which is com- prised of executive management, with the Global Oil Spill Coordinator (GOSC) acting as the committee’s secretary. In addition, Oil Spill Response Teams (OSRTs) are assigned for each of the company’s scattered operational areas.
The GOSC provides the primary direction for Saudi Aramco’s preparedness and compliance with oil-spill and pollution control at the national as well as the inter- national level. In the event of an oil spill, GOSC will oversee recovery and cleanup activities occurring in Saudi Aramco’s national and international areas of operation and ensure damage to the environment is minimised.
Directing the response to an oil spill will be the Regional Oil Spill Coordinator (ROSC) in the region affected by the incident, or the Oil Spill Response Commander, the top official of the Saudi Aramco company facility most directly affected by the incident.
For example, response to a hypothetical spill near Yanbu‘ refinery on the Red Sea would be directed by the Red Sea Oil Spill Coordinator, or the refinery manager.
The ROSC serves as the head of each area’s OSRT, whose members carry out response activities on-scene.
Each response team in every area has a detailed manual for every conceivable spill scenario. The company has developed main contingency manuals for the Arabian Gulf and for the Red Sea. Site-specific plans were also developed for the Jizan, Jiddah, Rabigh, Yanbu‘ and Duba areas along the Red Sea. There is also a separate vessel-response plan used by vessels of Saudi Aramco’s wholly owned shipping subsidiary Vela International Marine Limited, for each of its fleet of crude-oil and product tankers, as well as area response guides for St.
Eustatius and St. Lucia in the Caribbean Sea, where Vela’s vessels discharge crude oil cargoes. Saudi Aramco’s Marine Department also has its own detailed response manual.
Key components of the manuals are lengthy lists of key oil-spill response personnel, from the very top down, including multiple contact numbers (phone, fax, pager, etc.). When a crisis erupts, contacting the right people at the right time is absolutely essential to an appropriate, coordinated and effective response.
The company’s Environmental Protection Department (EPD) is an integral part of the entire oil-spill contingency network. EPD’s main role is to monitor, evaluate and advise on the development and implementation of national and international oil-spill legislation that may impact company operations. It also participates in regular meetings and drills with key regional and international organizations involved in oil-spill response, such as the Regional Clean Sea Organization (RECSO) and Oil Spill Response Ltd. (OSRL), which provide oil-spill equipment and spill management consultancy.
Contingency and response planning and execution are only part of what the company’s enormous oil-spill network does. Also important is what happens after a spill is contained and cleanup begins.
Salvage operations
Salvage operations, for example, can be enormous in scope. Directed by the head of Vela operations and the head of Terminal Pilotage, salvage-related activities for Vela’s Saudi Aramco-owned and chartered vessels include supervising the salvage team (the naval architect, tech and machinery room specialists and hired salvage consultants, surveyors and contractors), developing salvage and rescue plans, and coordinating operational activities related to salvage, lightering and damage control of a stricken tanker.
The Kingdom’s Sea Port Authority (SEAPA) plays the same role as Saudi Aramco in Ras Tanura, Jiddah, Rabigh, Jizan and Duba. SEAPA, which is the controlling authority for all marine activity relating to Saudi ports, has full responsibility for offshore operations in port areas, including salvage.
Fresh water is available at berths, and a bunkering station is also available at each port. The ports provide stevedoring services for cargo such as crude oil, crude-oil refined product, petrochemicals (both liquid and solid), heavy lifts and all types of general cargo. Besides cargo handling, the ports also provide pilotage, towage and mooring services.
During the 1991 spill, divers were employed to install, repair and reposition booms, wrestling with boom anchors improvised from two-ton sections of pipe.
Like contract divers, other spill-fighting resources are tapped, as needed, worldwide. In the 1991 event, for example, equipment came from Japan, Germany, New Zealand, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States and the Netherlands, including more than 32,000 m (20 mi) of offshore booms, more than 30,000 m (19 mi) of oil-absorbent booms and 2,000 m (1.24 mi) of bay booms, plus at least 16 skimmers. Transporting the urgent cargo to Dhahran were 24 chartered planes, including the giant Soviet-built Antonov-124.
Despite the company’s gigantic commitment of men and material to combat oil spills, it realises that an ounce of prevention is always worth more than a pound of cure. So, there is a laser-like focus on things that could go wrong in the water.
That is why oil tankers don’t have carte blanche to enter Saudi Aramco ports. They have to earn the right.
Despite Saudi Aramco’s success in preventing and responding to spills, “We can never relax,” said Al-Harbi, ROSC for the Arabian Gulf. “We need to always work harder to enhance our rules and regulations to be even more successful in avoiding potential oil spills in our waters.”