SEACOR Environmental Services Middle East Looks Forward to a bright future

With the coming of a new year, SEACOR Environmental Services Middle East (SESME) looks forward to a bright future in the region.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has been signed with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), and other industry contracts are in the pipeline. A contract has been awarded by the US 5th Fleet to provide response services in Bahrain and throughout its area of operations. SESME was the first spill response company to join the Regional Clean Seas Organisation (RECSO) and we are taking a full part in RECSO’s exciting developments. Support is also being given outside the Gulf to a number of international oil companies conducting exploration and production operations in India and Turkmenistan. This has required significant additions both of experienced personnel and also of oil spill and hazardous materials response equipment and this investment will continue through 2008.

SESME is unique in the Middle East with a complete, internationally trained, hazardous materials response team on 24 hour standby for response throughout the region. This team has gained considerable experience during 2007 with responses to numerous dangerous chemical spills in UAE ports ad this has required significant investment to be made in new state of the art chemical and biological response equipment.

As our oil and hazardous material spill response capability has grown, so has our training and consultancy business. SESME has updated oil and chemical spill response contingency plans and assisted many industries throughout the Middle East in improving their response preparedness.

Building on this success, SESME was contracted by the Marine Emergency Mutual Aid Centre Bahrain (MEMAC), to develop and run Exercise Muscat, a major national exercise held in Oman during December 2005. This was conducted for the Government of Oman, Petroleum Development Oman, Saudi Aramco, VELA Shipping International and MEMAC. It incorporated desktop and field deployments and involved participants from all the ROPME Sea Area countries. It was a resounding success and in addition SESME tested the GCC International cross boundary movement arrangements. In response to a request for assistance from Oman, SESME, together with our response partners from ADNOC, delivered personnel and equipment from the Mussafah base in Abu Dhabi to Muscat.

As an internationally accredited training organization SESME can deliver the full range of oil spill and hazardous material response courses at company locations throughout the region and we will also be running our own courses Dubai and Abu Dhabi. SESME has delivered several of the RECSO training courses this year including an International Maritime Organisation (IMO) Level 2 “On Scene Commanders” course and a Shoreline Cleanup Course and we have been selected to provide a series of oil and chemical spill response training courses for MEMAC.

SESME, has also developed and delivered numerous Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response (HAZWOPER) courses, certified to the US EPA international standard and these are now available to clients throughout the region.

So SESME looks to the future with optimism. The regional governments are placing ever higher environmental importance on their seas and shores. SESME is confident that it will continue to provide the high quality services that the regional companies demand to meet these increased national expectations.