Speech Intervent K L Holmberg

Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference30 August - 1 September 2009InterventionMaritime safety and securityMadam Chair, dear colleagues,The night between 30-31 July this summer the cargo ship “Full City” grounded at the coastline of Telemark County, in the south-east of Norway.“Full City” had an estimated 1000 tons of heavy bunker oil and approximately 120 tons of marine diesel oil on board when grounding, and it was a storm in the area. Hundreds of tons of heavy bunker oil leaked out of the ship and 120 kilometers of the Norwegian coast line are affected by the oil spill. One of the biggest environmental tragedies in Modern Norwegian history had happened.The first week a total of 212 tons of oil emulsions had been recovered. The cleaning up of the shoreline will continue in the coming months.It is too early to draw the conclusions of what went wrong and why in this specific accident. But I believe we generally can conclude that both national and international measures must be considered to improve the maritime- and environmental safety.Nationally we need to improve/evaluate our own oil spill prevention capacity. Our equipment to clean up the oil is still far from good enough, especially in bad weather conditions.I would like to see that we in our national evaluation also investigate how the Nordic cooperation works when accidents like this happens. A set of simple rules must be developed between neighbors to facilitate help without delay. The help we got from Sweden at this recent accident is, in my view, a good example how neighbors should cooperate, an example for all the members of the Baltic Sea Cooperation.I would also like to look further into the question of how we better can cooperate to prevent maritime accidents. The former Minister of Foreign affairs in Norway Mr Thorvald Stoltenberg has been asked by the Nordic ministers of foreign affairs how to strengthen and enhance “Nordic cooperation on Foreign and Security Policy”. The report presented last winter includes a number of proposals to prevent future accidents, including a Nordic maritime monitoring system to monitor the marine environment, pollution and civilian traffic. The report suggests a two-pillar monitoring system: “BalticWatch” for the Baltic sea and a “BarentsWatch” for the Barents sea.The work to implement the report must be monitored closely by us parliamentarians and I’m glad to note that the Nordic Council has put this topic high on their agenda.But we also need to address this issue broader internationally through the International Maritime Organization (IMO). “Full City” was registered in Panama and sailed all over the world. The heavy bunker oil from the vessel that destroyed much of the Norwegian coastline was used as fuel for the vessel. An international prohibition of heavy bunker oil as fuel must be implemented as fast as possible, and the fuel tanks on maritime vessels must be secure.Thank you for your attention.