Kerala to prepare oil spill crisis management plan

In the wake of the two back-to-back shipwrecks off the coast of Kerala, which raised serious concern about oil spillage posing threat to marine biodiversity, the State government will frame a detailed oil spill crisis management plan to prevent oil spills and mitigate the impact of the spillage.

The Ministry of Defence, the nodal ministry for handling crises arising out of the spill of oil and hazardous and noxious substances at sea, has directed the State to notify the plan in line with the one recently prepared by Tamil Nadu. For Kerala, with a coastline of around 590 km along the west coast and close to the international shipping channel, the risk of oil spills is high as the Vizhinjam International Seaport is hardly 10 nautical miles from the east-west shipping lane connecting Europe, the Persian Gulf, southeast Asia, and the far east, one of the major oil tanker routes of the world.

Speaking to The Hindu, S. Sreekala, chairperson of the Kerala State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB), said a Bengaluru-based agency has been selected for preparing the plan. The agency will study the characteristics of the sea along the Kerala coast and prepare a contingency plan in line with the national contingency plan. “The plans will define the standard operating procedures (SOP) to be followed by different agencies in the event of an oil spill,” said Ms. Sreekala.

As per a directive of the Centre, the State has now constituted a seven-member core group headed by the Chief Secretary, in addition to oil spill crisis management groups at the State, district, and local levels to manage oil spill incidents. However, the committees constituted at the local and district levels, did not actively involve local self-government institutions, drawing criticism from disaster management experts. The State-level crisis management group has 26 members, the district groups, 27, and and the local groups, 16 members.

In the latest shipwreck, the State and Central agencies had to wait until the southwest monsoon was over to remove the bunker oil from the sunken Liberian-flagged container vessel MSC Elsa-3, which sank off the coast of Kerala on May 25, 2025.