Ship Oil Pollution Damage Compensation Regime

With the development of civilization and the enforcement of environment protection in the world, the ocean environment protection has been a focus in the globalization of economy. International organizations and coastal countries have made many codes and policies to protect ocean environment, and the law of compensation for ship-source oil pollution damage develops very fast and comes to be more reasonable. This article has a review of the history of legislation on oil pollution damage compensation, analyzes the development trend of oil pollution law, then studies how to reform and unify the International convention regime of compensation, finally discusses how to establish the regime on compensation for ship-source oil pollution damage of China own.After the "Torrey Canyon" case in 1967.IMO made two conventions: International convention on civil liability for oil pollution damage 1969 and international convention on the establishment of an international fund for compensation for oil pollution damage 1971. These two conventions formed the regime on compensation for ship-source oil pollution damage. In the same time, oil tanker owners and oil companies made non-governmental agreements to deal with the oil pollution cases, and some countries, such as the United States, made their own oil pollution acts.1969CLC confirms that the oil tanker owner should hold the liability for oil pollution damage, but owners can have liability limitation. 1969CLC also requests convention states to maintain compulsory insurance of oil tankers. But the compensation under 1969CLC is not enough to satisfy the suffered party in oil pollution damage, so in 1971 IMO decided to establish an international fund for compensation, whose contributions came from convention states who imported oil. CLC and FUND conventions have been modified times with the development of international shipping, and become more and more acceptable on compensation limitation and liability distribution. And the 2001 Bunker Convention is a new progress in the international legislation on compensation for ship-source oil pollution damage.The U.S took part in the establishment of CLC and FUND conventions, butbecause of some reasons, it did not ratify those two conventions. The U.S passed 1990 oil pollution act and established the compensation regime on oil pollution damage of its own, which brought problems to the unification of international oil pollution law.Ship owner strict liability, ship owner and cargo owner sharing in liability and the unification of international law are three characteristics of the compensation regime of oil pollution damage. And we can predict that in the future the range of oil pollution damage compensation will be expanded, the compensation liability will get heavier and the limitation will be enhanced gradually.China is a convention state of 1992 CLC, but not of 1992 FUND. And China also has not an efficient regime on compensation for ship-source oil pollution damage. In order to resolve the oil pollution problems and avoid serious oil pollution cases, China has to analyze whether should ratify the FUND convention, then establish the law regime on compensation for ship-source oil pollution damage with Chinese characteristic which including compulsory insurance and compensation fund.