The maritime transport of oil has been increasing rapidly over the years in the NOWPAP region along with the fast economic growth. As increasing in our dependency on marine transportation using large vessels, an oil spill accident which can cause enormous environmental and economic damages may be occurred in the region. Furthermore, the risk of oil spill accident is getting increase due to gas explorations at the Sakhalin and the upper Yellow Sea in the NOWPAP region. The NOWPAP region is also influenced by dense tanker traffic transporting crude oil to People’s Republic of China, Japan, Republic of Korea and Far Eastern Russia.

In the NOWPAP sea area during 1990-2005, 19 cases for major oil spills (greater than 1,000 tonnes), 132 cases for intermediate spills (50 ~ 1,000 tonnes), and innumerous small spills (less than 50 tonnes) have been occurred. Following several catastrophic oil spills such as the Sea Prince accident (1995) and the Nakhodka accident (1997), the countries bordering the Northwest Pacific had developed their own national preparedness and response systems against oil spill such as preparation of national contingency plan and/or others. At the regional and international levels, together with acceptance of the International Convention on Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Cooperation (OPRC ’90), the countries also initiated the development of effective measures for regional co-operation in marine pollution preparedness and response as one of major priorities of NOWPAP.

In this respect, MERRAC has been building a strong partnership among the NOWPAP Members and carried out designated activities regarding the development of an effective countermeasure on regional cooperation in the field of oil spill preparedness and response in the Northwest Pacific region within the framework of NOWPAP, with professional supports from United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), International Maritime Organization (IMO), and NOWPAP Regional Coordinating Unit (RCU).

Especially, the NOWPAP Regional Oil Spill Contingency Plan (Plan) and its Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) were adopted by the 8th Intergovernmental Meeting (IGM) of NOWPAP (Sanya, People’s Republic of China, November 2003). As this, the NOWPAP Members are in a better state of preparedness and response to oil spills, as each of them may request assistnace from the other three NOWPAP members in cases of large oil spill emergencies.

MERRAC also published Technical Reports on Sensitivity Mapping, Guideline for Shoreline Clean-up, and Guideline for the Use of Dispersants, in order to provide appropriate technical measures and/or tools required for implementing regional co-operation on marine pollution preparedness and response.

Despite the efforts of the NOWPAP Members, oil spills in the marine environment still happen, ranges from several to the thousands of tonnes. Preparing a timely and coordinated response to such an incident that can happen everywhere is to required multilateral co-operation based on enhancement of implementation and regulation, and education campaigns for the general public, industry, municipal authorities, and local communities. It is also required that the Plan has to be implemented, tested and exercised during Joint Response activities and has to be kept up-dated continously in order to provide the framework for co-operation in cases of large oil spills.