Oil tanks on ships to be located inside double hull

Remember the Exxon Valdez? It was an oil tanker owned by the former Exxon Corporation. It gained infamy after the 24 March 1989 oil spill in which the tanker, captained by Joseph Hazelwood, hit Prince William Sound’s Bligh Reef and spilled an estimated eleven million gallons of crude oil. This has been recorded as one of the largest spills in U.S. history (Exxon spent several billions and more than five years on clean up efforts in the Sound — efforts which environemtnal experts said left much to be desired — and eventually annnounced that it was pulling out of the Sound becasue its work was completed. Jay Leno could not restrain himself, commenting in his monologue that after what Exxon had done to the sound, the verb “pulled out” was the appropriate one).

Security experts worry that terrorists may use oil tankers as weapons, ramming suicide boats into them — as they did against the USS Cole on 12 October 2000 — causing massive spillage of crude oil in order to inflict economic damage to industries and communities. Environmentalists have been worried about oil spillages for ecological reasons. Both groups will be glad to learn that amendments to MARPOL Annex I entered into force on 1 August 2007. New regulation 12A, on oil fuel tank protection, adopted by the International Marine Organization’s (IMO) Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) 54th session on 24 March 2006, sets out the requirements concerning the location of oil fuel tanks in all ships with an aggregate oil fuel capacity of 600m³ and above and which are delivered on or after 1 August 2010. In this context, “ship delivered on or after 1 August 2010” also refers to a ship for which the building contract is placed on or after 1 August 2007 or, in the absence of a contract, its keel is laid on or after 1 February 2008. The new regulation will, therefore, be immediately applicable for all categories of ships “on the drawing board” with oil fuel tanks of 600m³ capacity, or more. In essence, the protection requirements oblige the oil fuel tanks to be located inside the double hull, thus helping prevent spillages of oil fuel in case of collision or grounding.

The new regulation 12A aims to close a gap in MARPOL Annex I which, while mandating strict hull standards for tankers of 600 tonnes dwt and above, had not yet addressed the issue of large ships, not necessarily oil tankers, which can carry as much as 5,000m³ of oil fuel, or above, which is more than the cargo carried by some smaller oil tankers.