BALTIC SEAENVIRONMENT PROCEEDINGS No. 59 - Helcom

2
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
2.5
2.6
2.7
3
3.1
The Civil Liabilltv Convention and the Fund Convention
Under the Civil Liability Convention. the owner of a tanker has - except in a very limited
number of cases - strict liability for pollution damage caused as a result of a spill of persistent
oil from his ship. He is normally entitled, however, to limit his liability to an amount of
133 Special Drawing Rights (SDR) (US $186) for each ton of the ship’s tonnage, with a
maximum of 14 million SDR (US $19.6 million)“‘. The shipowner must have insurance covering
his liability.
In order to be able to limit his liability, the shipowner must set up a limitation fund with a court
or other competent authority in the State where the damage occurred, either by depositing the
limitation amount or by producing a guarantee for that amount.
In many incidents, the amount representing the limit of the owner’s liability is not sufficient to
cover the whole pollution damage. in some cases, the shipowner may be exonerated from
liability. The Fund Convention was elaborated with the aim of providing supplementary
compensation for pollution damage.
If victims of pollution damage are not able to obtain adequate compensation from the owner,
the IOPC Fund will pay them compensation up to 60 million SDR (US $83.8 million) per
incident, including the amount of compensation paid by the shipowner (or his insurer). The
IOPC Fund also indemnifies the owner - with some exceptions - for a part of his liability under
the Civil Liability Convention.
The IOPC Fund has an Assembly, an Executive Committee and a Secretariat headed by a
Director. The Assembly consists of all Member States (at present 56). whilst the Executive
Committee is composed of 15 Member States elected by the Assembly. The Secretariat has
nine staff members. The IOPC Fund has its headquarters in London in the IMO building.
A list of the present IOPC Fund’s Member States is attached.
A Diplomatic Conference held in 1984 adopted two Protocols amending the Civil Liability
Convention and the Fund Convention. The Protocols provide for higher limits of compensation
and a wider scope of application than the Conventions in their original versions. However, it
is unlikely that these Protocols will come into force in the foreseeable future since the entry into
force conditions will not be fulfilled. For this reason, a Diplomatic Conference was held in
November 1992 to adopt two new Protocols, containing the same substantive provisions as the
1984 Protocols but lower entry into force requirements, so as to ensure the rapid entry into
force of the new Protocols and thereby preserving the viability of the system in the future.
Contributions to the IOPC Fund
Basis of Contributions
The payments of compensation as well as the administrative expenses of the IOPC Fund are
financed by contributions levied on any person who has received crude oil and heavy fuel oil
(contributing oil) after sea transport. The contributions to the IOPC Fund are based on the
quantities of contributing oil carried by sea which are received in ports or terminal installations
in the territory of the State concerned. Contributing oil is defined in Article 1~3 of the Fund
Convention as crude oil and heavy fuel oil (more closely defined in the text of that paragraph).
Cl> The amounts specified in the Civil Liability Convention and the Fund Convention were originally expressed in (gold)
francs (Poincare francs). This was changed by the 1976 Protocols to the Conventions under which the amounts in
the Conventions are expressed in the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) of the International Monetary Fund. The value
expressed in SDR is converted into national currency by referring to its market exchange rate. The amounts given
in dollars in this note have been calculated on the basis of the rate of exchange at 28 June 1993 ($1.39701
= 1 SDR).
267