European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) issued an updated report, assessing the drills and exercises conducted during 2016 on oil pollution response. In order to provide additional support to the EU Member States’ pollution response mechanisms in a cost efficient way, EMSA operates, in European waters, a range of pollution response services.
The services are consisted of a Network of Stand-by Oil Spill Response Vessels, the Equipment Assistance Service (EAS) including specialised stand-alone equipment arrangements, as well as dispersant stockpiles. The OPR services are available for responding to oil spills at sea caused by ships as well as by oil and gas installations.
In addition, the Agency is tasked to support Member States in case of marine incidents involving chemicals. EMSA’s service provides rapid information transfer regarding chemical substances involved in marine pollution emergencies 24/7. In order to familiarise EU Member States and to ensure high quality of this service, several exercises of MAR-ICE are performed each year.
Conclusions
The outcome of the oil pollution drills, ECTs and exercises carried out during 2016 demonstrated that the service is operated efficiently and in accordance with EMSA requirements. Overall, the oil pollution response services achieved a high acceptable level of preparedness for oil pollution response.
- The evaluation of oil pollution drills, ECTs and exercises, either based on assessment by EMSA staff or on the contractors’ reports, as well as feedback from the Member States, is a most important tool providing lessons learned with regard to the technical condition of the equipment and performance of the crew/staff. Lessons learned in 2016 allowed determining actions aiming at the improvement of EMSA pollution response services in 2017 including pollution response capacity improvements, equipment overhauling or replacement, crew/staff performance parameters improvement, as well as the improvements/updates of the service mobilisation procedures.
- During the annual verification of the Equipment Inventory, special attention will be paid to deterioration of the condition of the equipment purchased in 2006-2008. Some older equipment systems (especially oil booms) which show signs of ageing may require overhauling and/or replacement in 2017.
- Participation of Member States representatives in vessel drills, ECTs and exercises makes them more familiar with the operational capabilities of the Vessel Network and EAS equipment sets. In 2017, EMSA will continue promoting this approach in order to enhance the integration of EMSA’s pollution response services into the Member States response mechanisms.
- Considering the positive feedback from MS, EMSA should continue in 2017 with the EAS training programme consisting dedicated training sessions on equipment deployment and operation for equipment operators from the Member States.
- EMSA should request more feedback from the Member States on the results of notification and operational exercises, in order to improve the mobilisation procedures and performance of response assets at sea. In 2017 EMSA shall analyse and implement the best approaches in this regard.
- In 2017 EMSA should continue encouraging Member States to give more importance to the completion of the full mobilisation procedure during the notification exercises. To improve results of the notification exercises EMSA may consider a series of trainings/workshops especially for those countries which encountered problems with completing the mobilization procedure.
- CECIS Marine Pollution (MP) simplifies and facilitates mobilisation of assistance to a Member State affected by a pollution incident. EMSA strongly encourages the use of this system during the notification exercises. In order to improve the system, all deficiencies related to the use of CECIS MP during notification exercises should be reported by EMSA and Member States to the system administrator (DG ECHO).
- Considering the obligation of the Member States to use SafeSeaNet for incident reporting and CECIS MP for assistance request/offer, training users in the use of both systems would help to improve emergency communication during the exercises and in real incidents.
- The number of activations of MAR-ICE for drills and exercises has increased over the years. This trend is positive as Member States that have used the service for exercises seem to be more likely to also activate the network for real incidents.
Further information may be found by reading the full report:
Source & Image credit: EMSA
