New response vessel contract awarded
The 2,744 m³ capacity trailing suction hopper dredger DC Vlaanderen 3000.
The effectiveness of EU Member States when responding to oil pollution incidents was further enhanced in November with the award of three year contracts valued at € 3.5m by the European Maritime Safety Agency to two European shipowners to provide standby oil spill recovery vessels for the Black Sea and North Sea areas.
This latest in a succession of similar contracts fulfils EMSA’s commitment to provide EU/EEA Member States with assistance in their response to ship sourced pollution within the Community. Oil spill recovery vessels have now been gradually phased in to cover the whole of the European coastline. Two tenders were issued in 2008, one for vessels to cover the Black Sea and North Sea areas and a second to cover the Atlantic European coastal area from Porto in Portugal to Brest in France.
In the Black Sea, Romanian shipowner Grup Servicii Petroliere (GSP) will be making the 1983 built offshore supply vessel GSP Orion, with a capacity of 1,334m m³, available for oil spill recovery duties. The vessel is based in Constanta, Romania. Meanwhile Belgian shipowner DC Industrial will be providing two Dutch flagged hopper dredgers, the 1981 built Interballast III, and the 2002 built DC Vlaanderen 3000, vessels with capacities of 1,886m m³ and 2,744m m³ respectively. Both dredgers normally operate along the Dutch and Belgian coastlines and will provide oil spill recovery support for the North Sea area.
Coverage for the Atlantic European area will be fulfilled with the contract to utilise the 1985 built Ria De Vigo, an anchor handling tug supply vessel owned by Remolcanosa Nosa Terra SA of Spain. The vessel is expected to enter into operational service in the first half of 2009.
As with the other vessels making up the network of standby oil recovery vessels contracted to EMSA, these three new contributors will be modified for their new role including specialist training for the crew. The arrangement is that they carry out their normal commercial operations but are able to be transformed into oil spill recovery vessels at short notice able to deploy state of the art equipment. During such operations they will be under the operational command of the affected Member State.
EMSA executive director Willem de Ruiter commented on the contract; ‘Following another successful tender process, EMSA’s network of vessels which are available to ‘top-up’ Member States capabilities during a marine pollution incident now covers all the regional seas of Europe. Previously existing ‘gaps’ around the coastline have been filled. I am particularly pleased that the Agency has been able to contract response capacity for the Black Sea, as this was one of the main target areas this year and was not covered previously. Three fully equipped vessels with a combined additional response capacity of 6,056 m m³ and costing in the region of €3.5m for three years represents good value for the Agency’
With this latest set of contracts being awarded the European coastline will be ringed by thirteen vessels between the Black Sea and the Baltic and equipment stockpiles at eleven locations.
By Peter Barker
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