Documents & Guides
Explore a variety of topics about marine spills, response and compensation matters in the pages below.
Each topic and area of interest provides access to more detailed documentation that is freely downloadable.
This includes our 18 Technical Information Papers which are fully illustrated with photos and diagrams and are available in several languages.
Alternative Fuels
What are the emerging alternative fuels and their associated risks, hazards, damages and liabilities?
Compensation for Ship-source Marine Oil Spills
What legal arrangements and sources of compensation are available for a spill from a ship?
Disposal
What planning and waste management systems need to be put in place to reduce the volume of oily waste for treatment or disposal?
HNS
What are the specific chemical response strategies for responding to a Hazardous and Noxious Substance spill, and what are the potential effects on human and marine life?
Contingency & Response Planning
What information is needed for an effective oil spill contingency plan? How can aerial observation and protective strategies assist with response operations?
Economic Effects
Which industries might suffer temporary economic losses and loss of market confidence?
Fate of Oil Spills
What happens to oil in the marine environment over time when spilled at sea? How do different factors such as volume and physical and chemical properties affect the fate of oil spills?
Explore the Resources
The Financial Cost of Oil Spills - a review of international cost data and the factors affecting the costs of oil spills from ships
Oil spills pose significant ecological, social, and economic consequences. The response to a spill and the effects of pollution damage can give rise potentially to high costs. The financial risk of an oil spill is consequently of immense interest to policy makers and the organisations involved in funding and providing compensation and in determining risk and liability.
Categories: Economic effects, Papers
A case for incorporating Environmental Social & Governance (ESG) into spill response
Over recent years the shipping industry has begun to discuss issues relating to sustainability, often within the framework of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG). In the context of ship-source pollution response, there is debate over how ESG can be practically incorporated into this emergency response sector, and concerns that it’s inclusion may lead to increased bureaucracy and higher workloads at moments when time is already at a premium. This paper therefore examines the feasibility and usefulness of monitoring sustainability during maritime pollution response, and provides practical recommendations on how ESG considerations can be tailored to the spill response sector.
Categories: Environmental effects, Economic effects, Planning & operations, Papers
Balancing the plastic see-saw
Globally, plastics are a widespread consumer product and, due to inappropriate disposal and accidental losses, are now found ubiquitously in the marine environment. Recently, however, there has been a growing interest in plastic pellets, or nurdles, following a spate of losses from shipping vessels during transshipment. Over the last five years, ITOPF has been heavily involved in five spills of plastic pellets, including incidents in Sri Lanka, South Africa and Spain.
Alternative fuels: a shift in the response paradigm?
The decarbonisation of shipping has become an increasingly prominent topic, and this is due to growing regulatory pressure, a changing climate of public opinion and investors demanding a faster energy transition as well as the industry’s increased focus on sustainability.
Marine HNS Response Manual
The Project to create the Marine HNS Response Manual was implemented through an inter-regional effort, including the participation of the Western Mediterranean Region Marine Oil and HNS Pollution Cooperation (West MOPoCo), the Regional Marine Pollution Emergency Response Centre for the Mediterranean Sea (REMPEC), the Bonn Agreement for the Greater North Sea and its approaches and the Helsinki Commission (HELCOM) for the Baltic Sea. The project benefits from the technical support and expertise of expert partner institutions such as Cedre, ISPRA and ITOPF.
Spill response during the Covid-19 pandemic (2022) - extended abstract
Responding to a spill under COVID-19 conditions brought unparalleled challenges in all aspects of launching an effective spill response. This paper discusses the experiences and issues from a personal perspective and what lessons were learned.
Categories: Planning & operations, Papers
Is greener cleaner? Spill implications from alternative marine fuels (2022) - extended abstract
With the eyes of the world on reducing human reliance on fossil fuels, the shipping industry is undergoing the largest fuel revolution since the obsolescence of steam-powered vessels in the 1950s. With more vessels expected to run on alternative fuels, it is a matter of time until an incident involving these emerging fuel types occurs.
Categories: Response Techniques, Papers
Spatio-temporal analysis of global marine oil tanker spills over half a century (2020)
This paper provides a global overview of the spatial distribution of accidental marine oil tanker spills of size 7 tonnes and over, based on ITOPF’s spills database, and explores spatio-temporal patterns over 50 years using GIS.
Category: Papers
Nurdles - one container, a billion problems (2022) - extended abstract
To supply the global demand for plastic, significant quantities of pre-production plastic pellets are transported by sea in containers. Plastic pellets, or nurdles, are lentil-sized (typically < 5mm) pre-production raw materials used to fashion almost all day-to-day plastic items. Recent analysis estimates estimated around 230,000 tonnes of nurdles are lost to the environment annually.
Categories: Response Techniques, Planning & operations, Papers
Liability and compensation for ship-source oil pollution in the marine environment. An overview (2021)
This booklet, written together with the International Group of P&I Clubs and the IOPC Funds, provides an overview of the international, and selected national, arrangements in place for compensation of costs arising from pollution damage caused by oil spills from ships in the marine environment, and some background on ‘who pays’.
Categories: Compensation, Papers