INTRODUCTION
Oil spill is one of the most critical issues for the petroleum industry. Each
individual refineries or oil terminals in Japan has already owned enough capability
to respond to oil spill incidents in usual operations in accordance with the
government regulations i.e mainly the Marine Pollution and Disaster Prevention
Law and the Petroleum Complex Disaster Prevention Law.
Furthermore, Petroleum Association of Japan （PAJ） had established “PAJ Oil Spill Co-operative” in January 1973 annexed to PAJ as a voluntary mutual aid organization based on the lessons learned from the JURIANA Incident in November 1971.
However, oil spill in Alaska in March 1989 triggered international concern over ocean environment conservation, especially necessity of strengthening oil spill response capability. Based on such international development, the Ministry of International Trade&Industry（MITI,now METI=Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry）of Japan arranged a government subsidy for“Major Oil Spill Response Programme”in Fiscal Year of 1990, which PAJ began to implement from 1991.