Nanjing Maritime Safety Authorities announced on 29 November that they are building an oil-leak emergency response terminal in Nanjing Chemical Industry Park in the city’s Liuhe district. This is the first national-level emergency response terminal along the Yangtze for medium-sized vessels, and is jointly designed by the State Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Transport.

The first phase of construction involves a number of facilities ranging from emergency unloading, recycling and storage to transportation and surveillance. The second phase will include a command centre, a laboratory and oil-reclaiming working boats. The size of investment and the timeframe of the entire project were not specified. Once completed, the emergency response terminal will have the capability to clean up a single oil spill of 500 tons. The terminal will also look after the waters in nearby Zhenjiang and Yangzhou.

In 2009, more than 350,000 vessels entered Nanjing’s waters. One sixth of them, or more than 60,000, carried in excess of 40m tons of dangerous cargo. According to Nanjing MSA, dangerous cargo accounts for 40 per cent of Nanjing’s non-containerised cargo throughput.