MARPOL Annex I – Prevention of Pollution by Oil

Oil tankers transport some 2,900 million tonnes of crude oil and oil products every year around the world by sea.  Most of the time, oil is transported quietly and safely...

Measures introduced by IMO have helped ensure that the majority of oil tankers are safely built and operated and are constructed to reduce the amount of oil spilled in the event of an accident. Operational pollution, such as from routine tank cleaning operations, has also been cut.

The operational and construction regulations introduced by MARPOL, which entered into force in 1983, have been a success, with statistics from reputable industry and independent bodies showing that these regulations, along with other safety-related regulations such as the introduction of mandatory traffic separation schemes and international standards for seafarer training, have been instrumental in the continuous decline of accidental oil pollution that has taken place over the last 30 years.

The MARPOL convention, in 1983, introduced a number of radical new concepts, such as a requirement for new oil tankers to be fitted with segregated ballast tanks, so as to obviate the need to carry ballast water in cargo tanks. This was superseded by the requirement for oil tankers delivered from 1996 onwards to be fitted with a double hull. The protection of the marine environment was thus greatly enhanced.

As far as operational oil pollution is concerned, the many innovations introduced by MARPOL on allowable discharges of bilge water through the oily water separator (with the well-known 15ppm standard), or oily waters from the cargo tanks, through the oil discharge and monitoring system, have contributed greatly to a noticeable decrease in the pollution of the world’s seas, though it is fair to recognise that a greater effort to impose compliance must be carried out.