Oil Pollution and International Marine Environmental Law

Abstract

After the Second World War not only the public interest in the environment increased in general. Concerns of coastal states about increasing ship-source marine pollution and oil spills started to grow as well. Some of the occurred incidents with tankers clearly demonstrated that oil spills in an environmentally or economically sensitive area could cause irreparable damage (Gold, 1998). Oil pollution of the ocean comes from shipping activity and offshore oil production. Sea-bed activities on oil exploration and production constitute a relatively small part in the general amount of the pollution of marine environment with oil. The principal cause of marine pollution with oil is shipping. Traditionally shipping is considered to be “a polluting industry”. The world’s tanker fleet counts approximately 7 000 vessels with cargo capacities between 76 000 and 175 000 tons (Gennaro, 2004). Usual shipping operations, especially transportation of oil by tankers and accidents, result in the dumping of around 600 000 – 1 750 000 tons of oil into the ocean per year (Brubaker, 1993). Due to the use of pipelines for petroleum products, oil transportation with tankers decreased significantly (Gennaro, 2004). However, the incidents with this type of vessels and the occurred oil spills occur constantly. The last oil pollution incident, which gained publicity and attention of the mass media, happened in October 2011 off the New Zealand’s coast. The grounding off of the tanker “Rena” and the followed oil leaking caused the environmental disaster. This oil spill seriously damaged wildlife, including penguins, seals, dolphins, whales and rare sea birds (New Zealand oil spill ship captain charged, 2011)