Study On Compensation Assessment For Oil Pollution Damage Caused By Oil Spill From Ships

As long as crude oils are produced offshore and transported across the seas by ships or pipelines, there is a risk of oil spills with the potential to cause significant environmental damage. The "Exxon Valdez" incident in Alaska, and other oil spills in recent years, have demonstrated high risk and damage to the local economics and environment caused by oil pollution. There is a growing need for quantification of impacts of oil spills on economics, marine ecological system, for oil spill risk assessment, damage assessment, and contingency planning. Therefore, the study on the compensation assessment methods for oil pollution damage caused by oil spill is necessary to supply a tool for comprehensive, quantitative environmental impact assessments in the marine environment resulting from oil spills.In the paper two methods are developed to assess the oil pollution damage resulting from the ship's oil spill accident. One is the direct way in which under the definition of the IOPC Convention, all the types of damage or losses are evaluated and summed up by means of appropriate mathematics methods according to their characteristics. The another is an indirect way in which the spill information and criteria of the accident (such as oil amount, oil properties, spill location, spillet area, polluted coast land) are compared with those of the previous oil pollution compensation cases by means of the fuzzy ranking method, and the damage and losses range of the accident can be obtained based on its similarity to the cases. The results of the both methods can be selected and balanced to make a final reasonable conclusion for the oil pollution damage compensation and claims.