National Oil Spill Prevention Response Readiness Exercise

Oil recovery vessels manned by the Finnish Navy exercise in the waters around Koverhar - Lappohja from 24-27 October 2017. Staff from the Finnish Environment Institute will act as observers during the exercise.

The 8th Service Support Squadron from the Coastal Fleet arranges the exercise, in which the multi-purpose vessel Louhi, the oil recovery vessels Halli and Hylje and the transport vessel Kampela 3 participate. Personnel from the squadron headquarters also participate in the exercise.

The objective of the exercise is to maintain oil spill prevention response readiness on a national level. The exercise consists of many basic training tasks, such as oil containment with different kinds of skimmers, deploying and anchoring heavy booms and cargo transfers.

- Each vessel will exercise the use of their own stationary skimmer systems. When forming detachments the vessels will exercise oil containment together by operating in different formations, a bit like threshers in a field, explains Exercise Commander, Lieutenant, Senior Grade, Mika Koutu from the 2nd Transport Division of the 8th Service Support Squadron.

One part of the exercise, as well as part of a real oil containment operation, is to pump the collected oil into a carrier that will take the oil to the shore. This enables the oil containment measures at sea to be continued effectively.