Pollution Prevention, Response and Compensation - Prevention of Pollution of the Marine Environment from Vessels - page 42

process. 3 The following part will briefly present the substantive provisions of the
MARPOL 73/78 Convention aimed at protecting the marine environment from
different types of vessel-source marine pollution. For convenience of discussion,
the six annexes of the MARPOL have been divided into three groups.

3.2 Pollution by Discharge of Oils and Chemicals

Each year, around 2,400 million tonnes of crude oil and oil products is transported by
tankers. 4 Pollution by discharge of oil is the major marine pollution from vessels. 5 In
fact, major oil spills from tankers prompted many of the current IMO regulations
regarding marine environmental protection. It has been claimed that “in recent years,
the average number of oil spills above 700 tonnes has shrunk from over 25 in the
1970s to just 3.7 per year. Interestingly, the biggest reduction was observed from the
1970s to the 1980s, coinciding with the adoption and entry into force of ...

[MARPOL 73/78]”. 6 Annex-I 7 of the MARPOL 73/78 Convention deals with oil
pollution from ships. 8 Like other technical annexes, it is amended regularly, and it is
therefore not possible to exhaustively discuss all the amendments and all the aspects
of such a complex and technical annex. This part briefly highlights some important
provisions of this Annex-I, particularly those which introduced innovative processes
and techniques and institutionalised certain pre-existing practices.
First, oil discharge criteria—which were pre-existing from the OILPOL era—
were incorporated through Regulation 34 of Annex-I. Under this regulation, oil
discharge is allowed only if the following conditions are satisfied:
1. the tanker is not within a special area;
2. the tanker is more than 50 nautical miles from the nearest land;
3. the tanker is proceeding en route;

3 MARPOL 73/78, art. 16. According to this process the amendments enter into force on a
specified date unless an agreed number of States parties object by an agreed date.
4 IMO, MARPOL Annex I—Prevention of Pollution by Oil, http://www.imo.org/OurWork/Envi
ronment/PollutionPrevention/OilPollution/Pages/Default.aspx , last accessed on 21 June 2014.
5 “A vessel may spill oil accidentally or intentionally. Accidental spillage may occur from a vessel
accident or during the transfer of oil to and from a vessel. Typically, intentional spillage is
operational dumping—e.g., a vessel during the discharge of its oil cargo will take on ballast
water to provide stability to the vessel, but then dumps the dirty ballast water (a water-in-oil
mixture) prior to or on arrival at a cargo-oil loading port. The largest vessel oil spillages are
attributed to vessel accidents.” Yip et al. ( 2011 ).
6

Psarros et al. ( 2011 ).
7 In 2004 the Annex-I has been revised which entered into force on 1 January 2007. The revised
Annex-I incorporated the various amendments adopted since MARPOL entered into force in 1983
and some minor amendments. Resolution MEPC.117(52), Revised Annex-I of MARPOL 73/78),
Report of the Marine Environment Protection Committee on Its Fifty-Second Session, ANNEX
2, IMO Doc. MEPC 52/24/Add.2 (1 November 2004).
8 See generally: Mattson ( 2006 ).