The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) has cleaned up 84 percent of the shorelines affected by the oil spill caused by the sunken motor tanker Princess Empress that sank off the waters of Naujan, Oriental Mindoro in February.

PCG Commandant Admiral Artemio Abu said this in his presentation during a House probe on the oil spill.

Oil spill response operations are being conducted in Oriental Mindoro, Antique, Palawan, and Batangas, he said.

Abu said out of the 74.71 kilometers of the total length of oil-spill-affected shorelines, 84.26 percent or 62.95 kilometers have been cleared as of Monday.

Three municipalities in Oriental Mindoro have stranded oil. These were Nauhan, Pola, and Bulalacao.

Meanwhile, several areas in Palawan were also affected by the oil spill including Agutaya, Magsaysay, Cuyo, Cagayancillo, Sitio Batas and Bantulan, Taytay; Dumaran and Arcelli.

He also said that 22 drums and 6, 219.5 sacks of oil-contaminated materials were collected as part of the shoreline oil spill response.

For the offshore response, the PCG collected 30,383 liters of oily water mixture and 290 sacks of oil-contaminated materials.

Abu recommended the amendment of the Coast Guard Law or Republic 9993 to remove the provision that the PCG is required to conduct a pre-departure inspection of all ships leaving the country’s ports since it is outdated and not practiced in other countries.

“As readily seen in the report of Marina (Marine Industry Authority) in their marine casualty investigation, it was said there that the conduct of the pre-departure inspection must be removed because that pre-departure inspection provision is an outdated part of our law. And that is impossible for your Coast Guard to conduct pre-departure inspections in every vessel in our ports. Let us be honest on that. So we need to review the part of the Coast Guard law that requires to conduct a pre-departure inspection,” Abu said.

“What we could do instead is a random inspection. If our people, the inspecting officers will observe that there is a clear ground. Among other countries, we are the only one with that kind of law,” he said.

He also suggested the PCG Modernization Law be passed so they could be equipped with modern equipment for oil spill response and the creation of a law establishing a National Oil Spill Contingency Plan, aside from the one issued by DoTr.

“We feel because of this incident, that is not enough. This national oil spill contingency plan has to be created by law,” Abu said. Jaspearl Tan/DMS