Oil spill management in Thailand

Abstract

Thailand has major industrial development along the coast especially expansion in shipping and oil industrial. These activities increase the risk of oil spill to the marine environment. To obtain the risk area, information on oil spill accidents, shipping activities and marine resources have been collected to identify risk levels in 23 coastal provinces. The risk was categorized by applying the Geographic Information System as a major tool. The coastal area is identified into four risk levels, for purpose of the oil spill response namely: the highest level, the high level, the moderate level and the low level. The risk categorizes are used as the basic to provide measurements for prevention and minimizing impacts of oil pollution including contingency plans, capacity building, oil spill surveillances, public relations and marine resource databases.