The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) is currently on many a mind in Easter Ross, the Black Isle and right round the Moray Firth as it ponders an application. This is from the Cromarty Firth Port Authority (CFPA) is for a licence to transfer nearly nine million tonnes of crude oil, possibly some of Russian origin, between tankers at anchor at the mouth of Cromarty Firth.
The plan has outraged local residents and environmentalists who fear “the catastrophic impact” of an oil spill on the Moray Firth dolphins, designated environmental sites, bird sanctuaries thereby hitting the vital tourist industry.
They point to what they see as the manifest shortcomings of the of the port authority’s environmental risk assessment. For example they say it ignores the fact the tide floods as often as it ebbs, and that the wind can blow from the east as well as the west. Both, one would have thought, basic considerations when trying to work out where an oil spill would go.
There is also disquiet at the way the MCA is handling objections. That body stresses it “ is delegated as the UK’s Competent Authority on behalf of the Secretary of State for Transport to determine oil transfer licence applications.”
Yet when local people submit their concerns to the MCA, they are not receiving responses from the agency. Instead they are coming from the very consultants hired to produce the risk assessment in the first place.
This may raise questions of data protection, and leaves some uneasy about the apparent closeness of the MCA to those acting for the applicants.
Complaints about the conduct of the consultation, and whether it complies with the Merchant Shipping (Ship-to-Ship Transfers) Regulations 2010, have now been sent to Patrick McLoughlin, UK Secretary of State for Transport, who is responsible for the MCA.
It clearly has all served to strengthen local resolve to fight the port authority’s plan if the MCA approves the licence. More than one voice has pointed out that it would not take many leisure/fishing boats to obstruct the tankers or indeed the much valued cruise liners entering the firth.
Some recall how around 1989 an alleged threat by the fishermen from Scalpay to moor their boats across the entrance to Tarbert, helped CalMac decide the time was not yet right for a Sunday service to Harris.
There is no plan to do something similar at the mouth of the Cromarty Firth, so far. But a new group has been formed in Cromarty the nearest community to the proposed oil transfers, to wage a long fight.
Members of the “Cromarty Rising “ group are understood already to be investigating possible legal challenges and political lobbying in Edinburgh, London and Brussels.
There is also talk of publicly informing the thousands of passengers on the 60 cruise liners which will pass Cromarty this year, of what is at stake.
With conservationists worldwide already expressing concerns for the dolphins, birds and environmental sites, this one could run a while yet.
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