The effects of oil tanker accidents to the marine environment and compensation system

Depending on the increase in the variety of products and services resulted from the development of chemical industry, crude oil and oil products have been used extensively. Therefore dependency to oil has been increased. Oil has been produced in the certain parts of the world based on its nature and is transported via various transport modes from these regions. Maritime transport is the most economic and extensively used transport mode in the world. Similarly maritime is the leading mode for oil transport. Even though maritime transport is the economic mode, it brings many risks for environment. The incidents that occurred in the past have proved that oil pollution affects primarily marine environment but also people that live in the affected region in terms of health and economy indirectly. Therefore presenting the impacts of oil pollution to nature and human will increase the awareness on the necessity for taking precautions against it. On the other hand it is main objective to prevent the pollution before it occurs but also recovering the impacts by compensating the nature and human that are exposed to the pollution is necessary. In this study, the environmental impacts of tanker accidents have been introduced, the harm to sea and its environment has been evaluated, then the international compensation system, which was initiated in 1967 with Torrey Canyon accident then finalized in today?s form in 2003, has been analyzed in terms of legislation and operation, the status of this system in the Turkish law has been set forth and its application and productivity has been examined.