Thickness Measurement for Tankers at the Kilpilahti Refinery Harbour, Porvoo

Inspection services for ships at Porvoo

Each service has its own page with the method, the class requirements and what the report contains.

Where tankers calling at Porvoo can be gauged

Alongside the Sköldvik jetties, gauging is confined to what can be done safely during cargo operations. Typical areas are main-deck plating and longitudinals, the outside of cargo, ballast, vapour and fire-main piping on deck, the pump room where the ship's procedures allow, the engine room and sea-water systems, and ballast tanks or void spaces that the crew has ventilated and certified for entry. Equipment brought aboard has to satisfy the hazardous-area rules the ship and the harbour apply, and the team's documents and safety induction are cleared through the agent before the berthing.

There is no ship repair yard at Porvoo or Sköldvik, so dry-docking and the gas-free work that goes with it take place elsewhere: in Finland at Naantali or Rauma, or at yards in Poland, the Baltic states and further afield. Measuring deck, piping and accessible ballast tanks at Porvoo before the docking gives the yard a partial steel list and shows which cargo tanks deserve the closest look once they are opened. Product tankers trading regularly between Porvoo and coastal depots can have the work spread over several calls, so that little is left for the yard.

• Sköldvik crude and product jetties — deck plating, deck piping exteriors and engine-room systems on tankers during transfer
• Gas and chemical berths serving the petrochemical plant — ballast tanks, voids and deck structure outside hazardous zones
• Repeat calls by coastal product tankers — deck and piping programmes spread over several visits
• Anchorage off Sköldvik — tankers waiting for a jetty, boarded by launch when ice and weather allow
• Docking yards at Naantali, Rauma and across the Baltic — cargo tank and bottom gauging once the ship is gas-free and dry

Tanker survey rules, ice and the refinery's direction

Ships at Sköldvik are subject to Paris MoU port state control, which Traficom, the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency, carries out, and tankers rank among the higher-risk ship types in the Paris MoU targeting system when their age and record warrant it, so corrosion and structural defects on deck are among the first things an inspector sees. Oil tankers are surveyed under IACS UR Z10.1 or Z10.4 depending on their hull arrangement, and chemical tankers under Z10.3; their intermediate and renewal surveys under the Enhanced Survey Programme set out mandatory thickness measurement and close-up survey that widen with every cycle. Charterers of older tankers commonly add CAP, and oil majors' vetting inspections look hard at deck and piping condition, which pushes owners to measure before a problem appears in a report.

Ice and the energy transition are the two forces particular to Porvoo. Under the Finnish-Swedish Ice Class Rules, tankers that must reach the refinery through a hard Gulf of Finland winter need high ice classes, and the ice-belt plating and frames that earn those classes lose steel to abrasion every season. At the same time, Neste has announced plans to move its Porvoo operations towards renewable and circular raw materials, which will change the mix of cargoes and ships over time. Emissions from tanker voyages between Porvoo and other EU ports fall under the EU ETS and FuelEU Maritime, and every tanker calling must keep its Inventory of Hazardous Materials current under the EU Ship Recycling Regulation.

Ships trading to Porvoo are inside a sulphur emission control area, where fuel must not exceed 0.10% sulphur unless an exhaust gas cleaning system (scrubber) is fitted. Scrubber wash-water piping, the overboard discharge and the hull penetration around it are among the fastest-corroding parts of a modern ship, so they belong in the gauging scope at every docking and, on open-loop systems, between dockings.

How a thickness measurement job runs at Porvoo

A gauging job at Porvoo runs the same way whatever the ship type. The sequence below is what the superintendent, the attending surveyor and the yard can expect from us.

Helsinki-Vantaa Airport is close to Porvoo, and the team reaches Sköldvik by road. The refinery harbour is a high-security industrial site: the ship's agent submits the team's details, arranges passes and the harbour's safety induction before the call, and books a launch if the tanker is at anchor. Technicians travelling from India need a Schengen visa for Finland, so we confirm dates against the tanker's laycan or berthing window as early as possible and keep a margin for consular processing.

• Send the vessel name or IMO number, ship type, class society, the survey due (annual, intermediate, renewal survey number, CAP or owner's condition survey), the port and dates, and the scope you expect.
• We confirm the scope against the class rules for that survey, prepare the thickness measurement plan with frame and section references, and say whether the measurement will be credited to a class survey.
• Mobilisation is planned around visa lead times and the vessel's schedule; the ship's agent arranges port access, and the yard or ship arranges staging, lighting, ventilation and gas-free certificates.
• Gauging with calibrated ultrasonic thickness gauges: through sound coatings only where the gauge's through-coating mode has been verified on a coated reference, otherwise on cleaned bare steel, with every reading tied to its frame, strake and location on the sketch.
• Readings are compared with original thicknesses as work proceeds; substantial and excessive corrosion and any cracks are reported to the attending surveyor and the superintendent the same day.
• The final report is issued on the class thickness-measurement formats with sketches, a summary of locations exceeding the allowable margins, piping tables where piping was in scope, and the gauge calibration and technician certificates.

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