Regional oil spill mitigation course hosted on The Palm, Jumeirah

The two-day course, organized in association with SESME (Seacor Environmental Services Middle East), took place on Nakheel's signature development, The Palm, Jumeirah.

Representatives from major Oil, Port and Development organizations from countries such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and, the UAE attended the course which involved a number of crisis management scenarios and exercises, and educating participants in what to do in the event of an oil spill reaching the shoreline of their respective countries.

One such exercise involved the quick installation of one meter of high inflatable protection booms that keep the oil out of reach of the sensitive areas until state of the art vacuum systems or 'skimmers' ( devices that pick up oil from the water's surface) are used to recover the oil.

Dr Imad Haffar, Manager of Research and Development, Nakheel and a board member of the National Task Force for Oil Spill Mitigation, invited RECSO to hold the course on The Palm, Jumeirah. He commented,

"With developments such as The Palm, The World and Dubai Waterfront, Nakheel is transforming the coastline of Dubai into projects of high strategic value. Accordingly there is a great responsibility to protect the shoreline from possible oil spills that could happen in the deeper waters of the Arabian Gulf and to take all necessary actions to mitigate the effects. This is one string to the bow of our Environmental Management System and we wish to share our vision with our fellow GCC countries so that, if an oil spill occurs in any of our nations' waters, we have a coordinated, effective response. We were honored to host such a valuable course and look forward to further collaboration with RECSO, SESME and our GCC neighbors."

Alex Spence, Operations Manager of SESME, who coordinated the training exercises for RECSO said: "The course has been a valuable learning experience for a number of key organizations from the GCC. By holding the event on The Palm, Jumeirah, we were able to increase awareness of the course and its objectives and this has shown in the diversity of our participants. In the event of an oil spill, a speedy, efficient response is essential, and this can only be achieved through the instillation of effective response systems and increased education and the forming of cross-border partnership."

The Regional Clean Seas Organization is an oil industry cooperative functioning on the concept of 'mutual aid'. Established in 1972 by the region's oil companies, RECSO's mission is to protect the marine environment in the Arabian Gulf from oil pollution emanating from operations of RECSO members' activities. Each member company shares the responsibility of ensuring a long-term commitment to the 'Clean Gulf' concept. SESME was the first response company to join and is the largest response company in RECSO.

Seacor Environmental Services Middle East (SESME) provides 24 hr emergency response, hazardous waste cleanup and removal, security and environmental consulting, oil spill equipment & materials and logistics support for offshore operations throughout the Gulf States and Caspian Sea regions.