News / Pressure builds to keep emergency tug
THE ISSUES which led to the introduction of an emergency towing vessel (ETV) to keep the waters around the Northern Isles safe have not changed, Shetland’s community safety and resilience board heard on Monday.
With less than four months until the current contract for the Kirkwall-based Herakles comes to an end, local politicians are heaping pressure on the Tory government to ensure cover remains beyond next March.
In late November the Department for Transport (DfT) – which faces a 37 per cent budget cut as a result of Chancellor George Osborne’s latest austerity measures – confirmed it would be consulting on the tugs’ future.
But the board heard that details of what the consultation will encompass have yet to materialise.
In a short statement the DfT talked of reviewing shipping safety risks in the Northern Isles and Western Isles and “looking into commercial towing options”.
On Monday, board members reminded the UK Government that it has a duty to protect the Shetland community in the event of accidents at sea.
Shetland Islands Council infrastructure director Maggie Sandison told the board that the council had written to Scottish secretary David Mundell in the summer outlining concerns that “nothing had been finalised for the future” and there was “no indication that funding was going to be carried forward after March 2016”.
She said the local authority had reaffirmed the importance of the ETV in the wake of the 1993 Braer catastrophe and pointed out that North Sea activity to the west of Shetland was being carried out in an “increasingly hostile environment”.
Sandison said the letter had made clear to the government that the community expects salvage tugs to be on hand to protect the islands “given that our contribution, particularly from the seafood industry, is so great”.
Councillor Jonathan Wills said that, while ships now benefit from AIS (Automated Identification System) technology, the reasons the tugs were originally stationed in the northern isles “are still there [and] in some respects the situation is worse”.
He said there were “inherent risks” for the oil industry working in deeper waters. The notion that, if an incident occurred, oil industry vessels would be on hand to help was unsatisfactory because such vessels “are not always available”.
“The point that hasn’t changed since 1993 is that one incident can devastate our seafood industry, our tourism industry for decades,” Wills said.
“You only have to look at the Exxon Valdes in Alaska to see the damage to small communities dependent on fishing.
“It’s in everyone’s interest that this provision continues. It’s still the responsibility of national government to protect citizens, their livelihoods and environments – I don’t think they can carry out that duty without ETVs.”
Board chairman Alastair Cooper concurred, saying Shetland was “very vulnerable” due to the close proximity of the coastline to oil developments, and he sometimes even questioned the use of just one tug for such a large area.
“I would like to believe that the consultation would reflect on the effectiveness of what is required given our locality,” he said. “The government has a duty to protect us.”
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