Solomon Islands: Oil spill, Feb 2019

Situation overview

The bauxite bulk carrier MV Solomon Trader has been grounded at Lavagu Bay, Rennell Island, Solomon Islands since 4th February 2019. Severe weather conditions have persisted until 22nd February. Initial attempts to salvage the vessel have been hampered by the weather. Starting on 15th February, the vessel has been leaking oil. According to the Government, the leak is now under control.

The oil spill has occurred near East Rennell, a UNESCO natural World Heritage Site, already inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger. It is having significant impacts on the livelihoods of the affected communities, living mainly by subsistence fishing.

The primary responsibility to ensure removal of the wreckage and cleaning up of the environment lies with vessel owner. Given the complexity of the issue, the Solomon Islands Government called for a response plan to be provided by the insurers of the vessel. The National Oil Pollution Committee (NOPC) under the Marine Spill National Contingency Plan was activated on 13th February and is providing oversight on response, in coordination with the National Disaster Council through the National Disaster Management Office (NDMO). An On-Site Operations Coordination Centre (OSOCC) was set up in Lavagu to coordinate participating response stakeholders. The OSOCC is led by the Solomon Islands Maritime Safety Administration (SIMSA) as the Incident Controller and supported by the NDMO staff who are deployed on rotational basis. SIMSA is currently on the ground embedded into salvage operations. The Australian Government has been supporting the Solomon Islands Government on offshore salvage and leak management operations, as part of its stand-by assistance to the Solomon Islands Government. It is expected the Australian Government will progressively withdraw support starting from 21st March.

So far, response has focused on containing the leak and on salvage operations.

Status of request for assistance

On 13 March 2019, the Solomon Islands Government, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and External Trade, requested technical assistance to UNOCHA and its UN Environment/OCHA Joint Unit to support the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change and the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources as lead response agencies on ecological assessments, ecotoxicology and livelihood impact assessments.

In response to this request, on 13th March, the UN Environment/OCHA Joint Unit alerted its Environmental Emergencies Roster to look for environmental experts to deploy to the Solomon Islands. On 14th March, an UNDAC alert (M1) was sent to mobilize resource people to support the environmental team on logistics and OSOCC support.

An environmental response mission will take place starting from 20th March, with a duration of three weeks.

The team composition is as follows: one OCHA team leader (Vini Talai, OCHA Solomon Islands), two senior environmental/oil spill experts (Sefa Nawadra, UN Environment sub-Regional Pacific Office; Richard Steiner, independent consultant) and a logistic officer mobilized by UNDAC through IHP (Thomas Borg Jacobsen, Danish Emergency Management Agency).

Mission focal point:
Margherita Fanchiotti
UN Environment/OCHA Joint Unit
Email: fanchiotti@un.org
Mobile: +41 76 691 08 59