OREANDA-NEWS. The Consortium held an oil spill response exercise to improve the techniques and to practice systems and equipment use jointly with the Emergency Ministry and regional emergency authorities.

As part of this philosophy, the Consortium has an extensive training program to ensure that staff is familiar with response planning, tactics and execution and more than 100 trainings and drills are being conducted annually. The Consortium participates in more than 50 oil spill response exercises a year jointly with the emergency authorities of Kazakhstan.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of “Kashagan 2013”, Deputy Managing Director Z. Marabayev said the Consortium’s oil spill plan incorporates “best oil and gas industry practice and results of global scientific research focused on improving oil spill response techniques”.

For the first time the Consortium is holding the drill with “the involvement of transnational resources” from a global Tier III oil spill response provider from Southampton. This is the provider with whom the Consortium has a contract in place in the unlikely event of a major spill.

The drill helped to raise awareness of the Consortium’s oil spill response programme and highlight its focus on three main areas when it comes to managing the risk of oil spills - that is prevention, preparedness and response, with prevention of operational incidents being the single most important deliverable.