Abstract:

The IMO (International Maritime Organisation) allocates significant efforts through conventions and other interventions of a legal nature to regulate the operational environments and requirements of training for crew working on board ships, as well as for personnel working ashore; these efforts are having a positive effect and the level of safety in relation to shipping operations has increased overtime. Although the number of oil spills across the world has a decreasing trend, risks posed by oil spills still remain as major concerns for societies, around the world. These concerns arise from the possible damages to ecology and economy, as well as by considering the adverse impacts related to sociocultural and psycho-social aspects. A risk when oil spills doesn’t occur that often and then do and becomes of international character, is that operational personnel might lack field experience and be less prepared. Recent major accidents, such as the “Prestige” and “Deepwater Horizon” have emphasized the importance of the associated response activities and training needs amongst operational personnel.

The South Baltic Oil Spill Response project (SBOIL) is a three year (2016-2019) European Union (EU) funded initiative, which is planned as a continuation of the BioBind project. Within the scope of that project, the BioBind system was established to ensure fast and effective oil spill response in any sea state condition by the use of a new more environmental friendly sorbent technique. The goals of the SBOIL are to enhance the existing response capacities using the BioBind system and to identify important gaps in international oil spill response by using a table top exercise training.

In November 2018, a Table Top Exercise (TTX) on testing a new oil spill response technique across borders was held in, Świnoujście, Poland. Under the framework of the SBOIL project, this international training exercise (in the form of a facilitated workshop) was organised in collaboration with the project partners from Sweden, Germany and Poland as well as local, regional and national stakeholders involved in oil spill preparedness and response from the various countries around the South Baltic Sea. The purpose of the training was to identify operational aspects of using new and so called “green technology” in oil spill response and to provid local authorities and national incident management centres with knowledge to address areas of oil spill response improvement. With this aim, an incident exercise scenario was used to test the compatibility of International/National/Regional plans, prove command and control procedures of a cross-border incident and identify-improve tactical decision-making processes. The analysis in hand presents the set-up of the TTX, as well as results and recommendations for the future. It also aims to highlight the training needs in cross-border collaboration and increase awareness regarding oil spills and their consequences. According to the results from the training, the use of the BioBind material is promising; the main challenge in relation to the use of this “new technology application” was the difficulty involved with waste management, mainly because of the current legislation in place within the participating countries. It also showed that without this kind of trainings, none of the gaps would have been discovered. The table top exercise was conducted through an action research approach.

Keywords:

Oil Spill Response, Scenario training, South Baltic Sea Region, SBOIL Project, Table Top Exercise, Training.