EGYPT and Saudi state oil giant Aramco plan to launch an oil spill containment exercise in an Alexandria port in November, an Egyptian official says.

The containment exercise comes after British oil company BP had a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20.

The drill aims to test response to a big shipping spill in the Mediterranean Sea, Mahmoud Ismail, the head of the environmental disasters and crisis management at the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA), says.

“We want to make sure that we have all the right equipment and people in place in the case of a disastrous spill, like the one BP had in the US,” says Ismail.

Egypt’s Petro Environmental Services Company (Pesco) and Aramco would be launching the spill containment exercise in the Sidi Kerir area, around 30 kilometres west of Alexandria, he says.

Sidi Kerir is a Mediterranean oil terminal at the end of the Suez-Mediterranean (Sumed) twin pipelines, which can pump up to 3.1 million barrels per day (mbpd) of crude from the Red Sea coast to the terminal. The pipeline is used by Middle East crude exporters including Saudi Arabia to by-pass the shipping chokepoint of the Suez Canal.

The drill would test the response to the worst kind of spill, called a tier three event that would require a full collaborative international response, Ismail adds.

“Tier three basically means that both companies and national forces will be tested in how to deal with a disaster,” he says.

Egypt’s navy and ministry of defence and a number of state environmental agencies also plan to take part, says Ismail.