Civil Liability for Marine Oil Pollution Damage: A comparative and economic study of the international, US and the Chinese compensation regime

Oil resources are unevenly distributed on the earth and most oil needs to be transported by sea. Therefore, ocean transport of oil is largely a one-way trade from the principal supply areas to the oil consuming states. The main routes of crude oil shipping are from the Middle East and Southeast Asia to the United States, Western Europe, Japan and China. It is often on these busy routes that the oil pollution incidents occur. Since the Second World War, oil has become the main source of energy in the world. Oil movements by sea increased since then, more and larger tankers were built to satisfy the increasing need for oil consumption. Hence, the problem of marine oil pollution increased with the growth of carriage of oil by sea.