MARPOL Redux: Look Back, because Something may be Gaining on Us

For roughly a century, maritime relied on liquid fossil fuels. Meanwhile, it took over half a century for regulations to start to deal with the negative effects of liquid fossil fuels and to effectively deal with maritime fossil fuel disasters.

The star player in this effort was OPA90, which, once implemented, massively reduced the negative effects of liquid fossil fuel damages.

Today we are standing on the precipice of the introduction of a huge number of more sustainable fuels, each with their own peculiarities and potentials for public and environmental harm.

Rather than rushing through regulations after the horse has left the barn for each sustainable fuel, this may be time to take the OPA90 approach and adapt it for the incoming fuels.

OPA90 was the lead for liquid fossil fuels regulations, and this effort resulted in various follow up efforts such as MARPOL double hull requirements, SOPEP and specific national responses. Many non-U.S. national response regulations have taken many pages from the U.S. playbook.

In retrospect this became an assortment of regulatory sausages.

This has also become evident when one considers that in the United States pieces of the OPA90 approach such as the Joint Incident Command System are now also applied in non-pollution related disasters such as the Dali/Key Bridge incident.

That speaks well for the conceptual success of the OPA 90 approach but does not mean it will not result in miscommunication and response delays in future sustainable fuel disasters.

When considering fuels, it is important to realize that, in maritime, fuels and cargo are actually the same thing. OPA 90 related to oil cargoes, but the adoption of SOPEP centered on the realization that many ships can carry as much oil for fuel as other ships carry in cargo.

In this regard a single regulatory model that includes cargoes and fuels of any kind and provides specific responses to the hazards of those cargoes and fuels would make sense.

In this regard the International Dangerous Goods Code provides a frame work for classification and handling of goods, but not for remediation in disasters. Some of the sustainable fuels would fall under this code and others would not, but it is unclear if this regulation applies to these goods if carried as fuel.

What all of this appears to argue is that the industry could benefit from a regulatory swamp drain and rationalize an approach that is linear and fully inclusive in its application.

Such an approach would do the following:

• Define what situations can result in general disasters with damage to property and the public (spills, groundings, hurricanes, tsunamis, melt downs, collisions, allisions, fires, explosions)

• Define what is carried aboard ships and categorize the hazards and preventative measures with those fuels and cargoes (that can include deck cargoes, lost containers, cars and lithium batteries)

• Outline a general response approach (Joint Command System, etc.)

• Outline specific response modifications for specific fuels and cargoes including environmental impacts and remediation challenges (salvage and environmental response per type of cargo and type of ship)

• Set approved user requirements (cargo and fuel shipboard prevention and response, Vessel Response Plan, SOPEP manual, approaches for autonomous vessels, etc.)

• Set approved responder requirements similar to Area Response Plans, vessel Salvage Marine Fire Fighting (SMFF) regs, etc.

• Set a standards for reimbursement of damages and response (Insurance and SCOPIC style standards)

• Set standards for enforcement. (limits to criminal prosecution and crew retentions, responder hold harmless, and federalization)

The realization of this approach would probably be a long-term industry wide IMO level effort, but a first pass will identify and categorize the various components and build a road map for detailed evaluation.

There is no doubt that much, if not most, of the above components have at one time or another been examined, activated and exercised under OPA90. OPA90 Forum is an organization that has hundreds of years of experience with OPA90 activities. In this regard a logical choice to make this first effort would be a working group organized under OPA90 Forum.