National Oil Spill –Disaster Contingency Plan (NOS-DCP)

The Government has formulated the National Oil Spill –Disaster Contingency Plan (NOS-DCP) for establishing an integrated national system for responding promptly and effectively to deal with any oil pollution incident.

• The Indian Coast Guard (ICG), is designated as the Central Coordinating Agency (CCA) for marine oil spill response activities. 
• Pollution response teams have been established by the Indian Coast Guard at Mumbai, Chennai and Port Blair.
• Further, a pollution response centre is also established at Vadinar, Gujarat.
• Two dedicated pollution response vessels have been commissioned and pollution response equipment have been procured.
• To ensure response preparedness regular training and exercises are conducted by the Indian Coast Guard. 
• Government has also formulated a scheme in the year 2015 to provide financial assistance to all Major Ports and cargo handling 26 Non-Major Ports under State Maritime Boards/State Governments for procurement of Pollution Response (PR) equipments/materials to combat oil pollution and mitigating measures.
• Financial assistance up to 50% of the total cost of the procurement of PR equipment /materials is provided under the scheme with the balance 50% to be contributed by the concerned port from its own resources. 

Initiatives taken by the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) in this regard are: 

• (i) Conduct of International Convention on Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Co-operation (OPRC) Level 1 and level 2 courses. 
• (ii) Vetting of facility contingency plans of ports and oil handling agencies. 
• (iii) Assistance in drafting and vetting of Local Contingency Plan of Coastal States for shoreline response. 
• (iv) Conduct of joint inspection of tier-1 facilities of oil handling agencies and major ports.