Hazards from the sea

We have got a jetty with two loading arms and the capabilities are that we can load boats up to 10,000 tons. That's governed by the amount of dredging that's carried out off the jetty head to allow the draft of the ships to fit in without sitting on the mud. So we can load up to 10,000 tons and we can receive similar sort of volumes. So typically, we would have two to three boats a month and the feedstock can come from anywhere in the world. We import and we export and those materials can be dangerous to the environment. Some of the heavier material is dangerous to the environment, but they also can be dangerous. Substances include chemicals and gasoline, so again, they are extremely flammable, very volatile and can cause incidents, because of their flammability.

So all of the pipework is fixed pipework. We don't have any hoses over that area, so there's less chance of a leak from the hose. We are quite closely governed by port procedures and our own procedures, so whenever there's a boat in, we have one of our guys over there all the time. So they have got what they call a ship to shore checklist, so they check everything is connected correctly, that there are no leaks before discharge or before import, then monitor the situation every half hour. So they will walk up and down the pipelines every half hour, check the flanges, check nothing's leaking. And they have, obviously, a good liaison with the crew. They have a radio over here. So they have a radio that they can communicate with us on the refinery, because one of the issues is you are, as the crow flies, probably a kilometre away from where we are standing now, so communication can be an issue. So they have their own, we have our own radio so that we can communicate internally, but they would also be able to communicate with the ship, because they are VHF radio, so they have a separate channel for communicating with the ship, so they will communicate directly with the ship's master.

There is a full control room, full emergency control room over there with the ability to discharge monitors, so you can... It's actually seawater, so there are pumps on the seafloor and those pumps charge a ring main and we can then direct monitors from a remote station and spray water on any incident that might happen. There is also 6000 litres of foam over there. We would have to seek permission from people like the Environment Agency if we were going to ever use foam in the estuary, because of the SSSI status, as we spoke about before, RAMSAR, the bird areas over there and the general use of the estuary as a pleasure and a port facility. So there are lots of private pleasure boats that use the estuary, so we have to be conscious of those as well. So the way it would work is we can also... We have got emergency shutdown systems, so we can press buttons over there that will shut our pipelines so that we no longer discharge or are able to receive material into the refinery. That stops the situation, but it does not empty the lines. So, we have got emergency procedures, emergency protocols. We have got monitors that we can use for water and we have got foam.

The information the emergency services will be looking for over the jetty would be very similar to what we talked about before. So again, they would be looking for, where are the people? Are the people accounted for? What is the situation? What are the materials involved? How much is involved? What is the wind direction? What are the effects on the surrounding area? So are you able to isolate things? Are you able to stop things? Are you able to contain the process? And then there would be further considerations because the control of that situation is partially ours, but it is also very much under the command of the master of the ship. So if the ship decides that they wish to disconnect and move away from the jetty, then they will do that. We cannot stop that. All we can do is facilitate it. So our role is really giving as much information as we can to the emergency services. And if we were fighting an incident over there, then the emergency services would have to come through the port to get to the site. So they would have to understand where the site was, what materials we have got and how they would manage the situation. And all the way along the jetty itself, there are fire extinguishers, there are jetty monitors and there are fire hoses, so we can support the emergency services with our equipment as well.