A key task for the Agency is to make available additional at-sea oil recovery resources to assist Member States respond­ing to large scale incidents such as the Erika (1999, France) and Prestige (2002, Spain). Therefore, a Network of Stand-by Oil Spill Response Vessels has been built up in order to 'top-up' pollution response capacities of the EU Member States.

The EMSA Stand-by Oil Spill Response Vessels are commercial vessels which can be rapidly converted to oil pollution response activities. The contracted vessels have large recovered oil storage capacities and a choice of oil recovery systems (sweeping arms or boom & skimmer system).

In order to improve the efficiency of at-sea operations, each vessel is:

• Equipped with specialised oil spill response equipment which has been selected according to regional factors such as the weather conditions in the stand-by areas. All of the specialised oil spill response and associated equipment is containerised in order to facilitate rapid installation onboard the vessels
• Equipped with a local radar based oil slick detection system
• Able to decant excess water so maximising the utilisation of the onboard storage capacity
• Able to heat the recovered cargo and utilise high capacity screw pumps in order to facilitate the discharging of heavy viscous oil.