Country Profiles - Help

This page provides information on the following topics:

What are the Country Profiles?

The Country Profiles provide a summary of oil spill response arrangements and resources in maritime nations. They were originally developed in 1993 to help shipowners produce the Shipboard Oil Pollution Emergency Plans (SOPEPs) required under the MARPOL Convention, but have also proved be useful to other organisations involved in the production, transport or handling of oil, and for preparing for and responding to spills.

There are currently some 160 Country Profiles, 2-4 pages in length and containing information under the following headings:

    • Spill Notification Point
    • Competent National Authority
    • Response Arrangements
    • Response Policy
    • Equipment
    • Previous Spill Experience
    • Hazardous & Noxious Substances (where available)
    • Conventions
    • Regional and Bilateral Agreements

The Profiles are updated as new information becomes available.

What are the Regional Profiles?

The Regional Profiles provide a summary of the risk of oil spills and state of preparedness in the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Regional Seas areas.  They include brief information on oil transportation in the region, data on historical tanker spills, the designation or otherwise of competent national authorities, participation in regional or multilateral spill response arrangements, provision of spill response equipment and materials and ratification of certain relevant international conventions.

How can I access the Country and Regional Profiles?

The Profiles have been made available in a standard Adobe Acrobat format.  They can be printed out or incorporated into contingency plans and other documents, but their content has been protected, so that neither the text nor their appearance can be edited. Before accessing the Profiles, users must agree to the Terms and Conditions with which they will be presented.

Individual Profiles can be viewed and saved on-line, or - for the Country Profiles only - groups of Profiles can be downloaded together for later use.  The Country Profiles can also be accessed via the GIS.

Viewing and saving individual Profiles online

Choosing this option brings up an index on the left of the screen which lists all the individual Profiles with the date they were last updated.  For the Country Profiles only, an Introduction and List of Profiles is also provided.

Downloading groups of Profiles for later use

This page provides a series of options for downloading groups of Country Profiles. The entire set of Profiles can be downloaded, either as one large file or as individual files. Small groups of Profiles for particular regions are provided, and also the last three individual months of updates, so that users wanting to keep up to date do not have to download the whole set each month. To minimise downloading time, these groups of files have been compressed as ZIP files.

What software will I need to access the Country Profiles?

In order to access the Profiles, you will need a PDF reader program.  If you do not already have one installed, you can download a free reader at Adobe’s website. To decompress groups of downloaded Profiles, file compression software is required, ie WinZip.