OIL SPILL Project Continues until December 2021

The Interreg BSR Managing Authority/Joint Secretariat (MA/JS) offered a possibility to apply for project prolongation due to the pandemic and the distractions entailed. After discussing this option with the Partners, the OIL SPILL Project Office at the University of Turku sent the application to MA/JS in Rostock.

The requested prolongation of the project duration by six months was accepted. Thus, the implementation phase of the OIL SPILL project will last until 31 December 2021. For Project Manager Jarmo Malmsten, the prolongation decision was very welcomed.

“We have been working in exceptional circumstances for some time already, and several activities had to be canceled this year. The prolongation of the Project enables us to execute the postponed events as well as plan alternatives for those activities that are impossible to implement in these circumstances.”

Despite the difficulties in 2020, a lot has been achieved in the OIL SPILL during the first half of the Project. According to Jarmo, the most concrete achievements relate to analyzing the current oil spill response capability in the Baltic Sea Region. As examples, he mentions the inspection of the division of tasks, legislation, and current state of oil spill response in the different countries and the assessment of using maritime simulators in oil spill response training in the region. Also, several national advancements have been made. For instance, in Latvia, the voluntary sector has been linked to the oil spill response, and work in the pilot area in Southwest Finland has progressed well.

“As the OIL SPILL project has proceeded, its importance has become more evident. There is a definite need to better organize the oil spill response activities and clarify the division of tasks between different stakeholders throughout the Baltic Sea Region. Development and cooperation projects like OIL SPILL cannot offer instant, ready-made solutions. However, these projects gather and connect the relevant stakeholders across the borders, and new ideas, networks, and advantageous initiatives get generated. Actually, it is this network and the ideas initiated during OIL SPILL that will be the central legacy of the Project – these processes will continue even after the official end date.”