Work to retrieve oil from the MT Solar 1 that sank off the coast of Guimaras seven months ago began yesterday.

Department of Environment and Natural Resources officials yesterday boarded the Allied Shield tasked with retrieving oil from the MT Solar 1 to ensure its crew's compliance with environment precautions required by the Philippine government.

The Allied Shield, a vessel of Sonsub, an Italian firm specializing in deepwater operations, docked at the Bacolod Real Estate Development Corp. port in Bacolod City Saturday night and sailed for the sink site yesterday morning to begin work

Mark Phibbs, who heads the Sonsub Remotely Operated Vessels special projects, said it will take them two to three days to do a survey of the sink site after which they will start drilling operations on the tanks on board Solar 1 to remove the oil.

We do not know how much oil is still on board the Solar 1, the length of the recovery work will really depend on that, he said.

Negros Occidental Gov. Joseph Marañon yesterday morning also boarded the Allied Shield where Phibbs briefed him on the oil retrieval operations and assured him that precautions are in place to prevent any spill from reaching Negros Occidental.

Sonsub was contracted by the Protection and Indemnity Club, insurer of Solar 1 and retrieval operations are estimated to cost $6 million or about P10 million a day from the time the vessel left Singapore and is expected to last 20 to 25 days, Joe Nichols, International Oil Pollution Compensation Fund deputy director, said.

Solar 1 sank 9 kilometers south of Guimaras to a depth of about 2,100 meters carrying about 2,000 tons of oil owned by Petron in August last year.

The Philippines Coast Guard will bar vessels from entering a 1 kilometer radius around the recovery site to avoid work disruption.

DENR Regional Director for Western Visayas Lormelyn Claudio said the Allied Shield was required an Environment Compliance Certificate "wherein conditions were set that we want to ensure are in place."

Bienvenido Lipayon, DENR Environment Management Bureau regional director, said in the ECC the Allied Shield was required to outline its mitigating measures should the retrieval operations cause some oil to leak into the sea.

They assured us that oil booms and skimmers to prevent any spread of oil that may leak will be in place, he said.

The Philippine Coast Guard also has a second defense of oil booms while a third defense made up of indigenous spill booms has also been set up by Guimaras barangays, he said.

Livino Duran, Negros Occidental Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Officer, said the DENR has set up four teams for the recovery operations.

One team will be in Guimaras, two teams at the recovery site, and one will be based at the BREDCO port in Bacolod City to ensure compliance of the ECC.

A team will be at the Bacolod port where the Allied Shield will offload the recovered oil. The DENR will be there to monitor the volume of recovered oil, take samples and ensure safety precautions in its transfer to its final destination, Duran said.

Phibbs has stressed that all the risks are being anticipated, Sonsub has put in a contingency plan to address them to ensure a fail-safe operation.

Contingency plans include oil spill response tugboats that will be deployed for the duration of the retrieval operations. The boats will be equipped with oil dispersants, oil skimmers, for the mechanical recovery of oil and spill booms for containment, he said.

One aircraft which has airborne dispersant capability will continuously be monitoring the area.

On board the Allied Shield are two ROVs that will be used for the recovery operations, he said.

The Allied Shield crew will be operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week to hasten the recovery of any trapped oil in Solar 1, he said.*CPG

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