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The Lisbon-based European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) is launching a new procurement tender for stand-by oil recovery vessels covering two areas: the Northern part of the Baltic Sea and the Western Approaches of the Channel & Atlantic.

The latest tender will be similar to previous tender rounds. The purpose is to maintain the EMSA network of stand-by oil recovery vessels through the establishment of 3 year renewable contracts with commercial ship owners and/or operators and/or spill response organisations and/or manufacturers.

Following the Prestige incident, EMSA was given the task to provide addition pollution response capacities to European Member States.

Since 2005, the agency has contracted commercial ships equipped by the agency to operate, upon request, as pollution response vessels. The aim is to protect the marine environment by mitigating the shoreline impact of an oil spill.

To date, oil recovery vessels have been contracted in the Baltic Sea, Atlantic Coast, and Mediterranean and Black Sea areas. The current network of at-sea oil recovery vessels includes different type of vessels from small bunker tankers to hopper dredgers as well as offshore supply vessels. These are commercial vessels that can be adapted for oil pollution response activities.

Following any pre-fitting works, the EMSA says these vessels will ideally have large recovered oil storage capacity and state of the art equipment (such as a slick detection system), as well as a choice of oil recovery systems (sweeping arm or boom & skimmer).

The specialised oil spill response related equipment will either be stored permanently onboard or containerised to facilitate rapid installation onboard the vessels, the EMSA said.