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The Exercise Sula report has been published and is available on the MCA’s web site.
Exercise Sula was held in Scotland in May to test the UK’s response to an uncontrolled release of hydrocarbons into the sea from a deep water well.
This was the first time an exercise has been held using a deep water scenario. It was also the first major, national exercise to incorporate all aspects of the national contingency plan (NCP) and the full establishment of various response cells.
The work of each cell was monitored by a group of industry and environmental experts. Their findings are that overall the exercise showed that the UK could deal with an incident of this type.
In the foreword of the report, Philip Naylor, Director of Maritime Services at the MCA and Wendy Kennedy, Head of Offshore Environment and Decommissioning Unit at the Department of Energy & Climate Change said,
"The exercise demonstrated that the UK has highly professional and dedicated personnel who can respond effectively. As could be expected with any well planned and tested scenario, the exercise highlighted some areas for improvement and identified a number of learning points which can be directly applied in future.”
The report can be found on this link; http://www.dft.gov.uk/mca/mcga07-home/emergencyresponse/mcga-dops_cp_environmental-counter-pollution_and_response.htm
The exercise was led by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) and Department of Energy and Climate Change ( DECC).
Chevron Upstream Europe, Oil Spill Response, Stena Offshore, Briggs Environmental, Braemar Howells, BP (Sullom Voe terminal), Shetland Islands Council, Marine Scotland, Hess, Joint Nature Conservation Committee, Northern Constabulary, Scottish Natural Heritage, Foods Standards Agency, Scottish Fisheries Association, Oil & Gas UK and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency also participated in the exercise.
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