Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment he has made of the (a) potential impact of uninsured tankers carrying Russian oil on the risk of oil spills and (b) adequacy of preparations to protect the UK (i) coast and (ii) marine environment in the event of an oil spill.

The UK, together with international partners, has implemented extensive sanctions against Russia following its illegal invasion of Ukraine. This includes sanctions which have targeted oil, Russia’s greatest source of revenue.

Illegal circumvention of those sanctions is unacceptable, which is why the Government is seeking multilateral action through the International Maritime Organization (IMO), such as the recent resolution on ship-to-ship (STS) transfers at sea by the dark fleet which was co-sponsored by the UK and other G7 nations to tackle the environmental risk. This resolution presents strong recommendations to improve awareness and monitoring of STS transfers in countries’ waters, stronger adherence to international regulations and conventions, and a greater awareness of the fraudulent and deceptive activities by vessels in the ‘dark fleet’. Through these actions, the Government intends to highlight on the global stage the illegality of Russia’s actions and reduce the pollution risk by outlining the strong response that will be delivered to violations of sanctions.

The UK has well-established plans/protocols for the response to an oil spill. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) is the National Competent Authority for at-sea pollution response. The MCA Counter Pollution and Salvage (CPS), under the direction of HM Coastguard, are custodians of the national pollution response resources which comprise specialist oil containment and recovery equipment and dispersant. These are supported by manned aircraft for spill surveillance, verification and quantification and a suite of aerial dispersant spraying capability. Personnel and resources are in place 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year and provide an incident management and response capability anywhere within the UK’s Exclusive Economic Zone. Regular exercises are undertaken to test national multi-agency spill response procedures.

The MCA does not have responsibility for pollution response on the UK shoreline; this is vested in the local authorities and devolved nations . However, the MCA CPS will support pollution response along the UK shoreline using the other nationally held containment and recovery capability held in the stockpiles. Incident management, specialist response teams, and liaison personnel are also available. As with at-sea pollution response, regular engagement with local authorities in response exercises is undertaken. The resources held by the MCA are those commensurate with a Tier 3 national response requirement as described within the National Contingency Plan for Pollution from Shipping and Offshore Installations.