This month’s Maritime Reporter & Engineering News featured a story about the new base opened last month by Oil Spill Response Limited (OSRL), a global oil spill cooperative funded by more than 160 companies. Here’s some of the writeup:

“The opening of the base last month in Singapore was touted as a milestone event for the maritime and oil and gas industries in the Asia Pacific region, as it brings together personnel and equipment resources in a single place, designed to deliver an integrated, swift and effective response to an emergency oil spill incident. A feather in the cap, so to speak, of the base centered on the arrival of the advanced subsea well capping equipment, the capping stack, which can be mobilized throughout the Asia Pacific region in the event of a subsea well control incident.

“‘Staying true to our mission to respond to oil spills effectively and efficiently anywhere in the world, the Loyang base forms an important link in our global network of response, preparedness and subsea well intervention services to our members and stakeholders in the region,’ said OSRL Chief Executive Robert Limb.

“Located within a dedicated oil and gas supply facility with wharf access and in proximity to key airports, the new base is strategically placed for OSRL to mount an emergency response either by air or sea, thereby offering a range of viable response delivery options during an emergency spill incident.

“‘OSRL is a global organization that provides members with resources to prepare for and respond to oil spills,’ said Limb … ‘In recent years, OSRL has responded to major oil spills in Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, Pakistan, India and Australia from the Singapore base … In this region, we have strengthened our response capability by increasing the number of dedicated oil spill responders stationed in Singapore to 30 and invested heavily in responder training and exercise especially in new skills sets such as shoreline assessment, incident command and modeling technology'”-

Sounds pretty good so far, but we have a few questions.

Did you fellows at OSRL get a chance to read about the ongoing saga of the MOL Comfort? The whole world is awaiting a response from those who blacklist anyone who would dare to dirty our oceans with even the slightest amount of pollution (?), but instead we’ve been assured by the media that the “MOL Comfort oil slick disperses.”

More than 1,600 tons of bunker fuel and about 4,500 containers were spilled into the Indian Ocean, but we’re supposed to believe that all’s well? Is the whole event being dismissed because funding member companies, like MOL, get free passes, but non-funding outsiders are vilified, ripped-off, and suffer the everlasting wrath of greenies, earth-huggers and the like?

It’s becoming more and more obvious – it all depends upon whose ox is being GOREd.