World Premiere in Singapore

Captain M Segar, Assistant Chief Executive (Operations) of the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA), opened the evening by welcoming the attendees at ITOPF's world premiere of the Shoreline Clean-up and Oil Spill Compensation films. He set the context of the importance of international collaboration in minimising the impact of marine oil spills. As a major hub port along a busy waterway, with some 130,000 vessel arrivals per year, Singapore has a significant interest in protecting the marine environment and promoting the sustainable growth of the maritime industry, so there was no better setting for the first showing of two of the films in ITOPF's award-winning film series "Response to Marine Oil Spills".

Capt. Segar said "MPA has a long-standing relationship with ITOPF, spanning over 20 years. Strong international cooperation helps us to draw and apply the lessons learnt from the global incidents, thus preventing a repeat of such incidents. It is only through our collective effort that we can continue to promote the sustainable growth of the industry. On this note, I applaud ITOPF for finding creative means, such as this film series, to reach out to a wider audience, and promote good practice and raise awareness of the issues involved in oil spill response.

"The presenter-led documentaries have been produced by an award-winning UK production company. They incorporate footage shot on location at oil spills worldwide since 2007, combined with interviews and archive film from the major incidents of the last 45 years.

The first three films in the 7 part series which were released at the start of May scooped all three top prizes at the International Oil Spill Conference Film Festival in the USA. "Throughout the film series we have worked with our partners in the Global Oil Spill Response Community to generate key messages which are applicable throughout the world" said Dr Tim Lunel, Support & Development Director at ITOPF. "This is reflected in Singapore with the fantastic support given by Capt. Segar, Capt. Daknash, Ms Shirley Tan and their teams at the MPA for this launch event. OSRL with its base in Singapore also played an important role in the earlier films in the series so we were pleased that they were able to join the broad network of organisations at this enjoyable evening in the historic Arts House in the heart of Singapore."

"It was important for ITOPF with its worldwide remit to conclude the launch of its film series in Asia" said Alex Hunt, project manager for the film series and also team leader for ITOPF's Asia Pacific technical team. "With the increasing trade volumes in waters such at the Malacca Straits we have a real focus for working on preparedness as well as response in the region. So when these films are available on DVD with subtitles in Chinese and Korean as well as English, French, Spanish and Arabic at the end of the month we are hoping that our key partners across the Asia-Pacific region will find them a useful resource for their training and communication initiatives" he concluded.

Category: Asia