Abstract:
Oil spill can be considered as one of the ecological disasters on marine environment. It has become a global concern because of its adverse effects on marine environment, society and economy. The oil spill incidents that occurred in the Kingdom of Bahrain caused damage to marine environment and threatened the vital coastal facilities along Bahrain’s coastlines.

The objectives of the present study are to examine the oil spill management in the Kingdom of Bahrain and determine the exposure level of the coastal facilities to oil spills which eventually strengthen the preparedness and enhance the response to oil spill incidents in Bahrain.

In this study the national legislations, the conventions related oil spill managements, the reports of the oil spill incidents occurred in the last ten years in Bahrain and the correspondent oil spill contingency plans were reviewed and evaluated using a complianceindex. To determine the exposure level of the coastal facilities to oil spills, GNOME model was validated and applied to forty hypothetical oil spill scenarios.

The modeling results showed that the coastal facilities in Al-Hidd and Sitra is more probable to be hit by oil spills than other coastal facilities. The coastal facilities in the northern coastlines are vulnerable to receive more quantity of oil than other coastal facilities. However, the time required for oil to reach the northern coastline is longer, compared to the other coastlines. It is recommended to utilize the modeling results to enhance oil spill response, by using them in contingency planning, setting the protection priorities and allocation and mobilization of response resources both in government and private sectors.The review of the national legislations and conventions related to oil spill management revealed a need to update the current national legislations to incorporate the obligations and requirements of the reviewed conventions into the national legislations. The evaluation of the oil spill incidents reports and the oil spill contingency plans showed that the compliance of the coastal facilities to the requirement of the oil spill management was good during 35% of the reviewed incidents reports. Therefore, it is recommended to enhance the available response capabilities and the communication among the competent parties by developing a national communication system to enhance the notification and reporting processes during oil spill incidents.