The Merchant Shipping (Prevention of Oil Pollution) Regulations 2019

PART 6 Offshore Installations

Requirements for Offshore Installations

33.—(1) Subject to paragraph (2), offshore installations engaged in the exploration, exploitation or associated offshore processing of sea-bed mineral resources must comply with such requirements of these Regulations and Annex I as are applicable to ships (other than oil tankers) of 400 GT and above except that—

(a) such installations must be equipped, so far as practicable, with the systems and tanks required by regulations 12 and 14 of Annex I;

(b) the master must ensure that a record is kept, in a form approved by the Secretary of State, of all operations involving oil or oily mixture discharges; and

(c) subject to the provisions of regulation 21 of these Regulations, the discharge into the sea of oil or oily mixture is prohibited except when the oil content of the discharge without dilution does not exceed 15 ppm.

(2) Paragraph (1) does not apply to a fixed or floating production platform engaged in the activities described in paragraph (1) which—

(a) is located in waters in any area for the time being designated under section 1(7) of the Continental Shelf Act 1964(1): and

(b) is not, at the time at which it is so engaged, capable of being propelled through water under its own power.

(3) For the purposes of paragraph (2), and subject to paragraph (4), a fixed or floating production platform means a platform from which sea-bed mineral resources are extracted from beneath the sea-bed by means of a well, or which is used for the conveyance of sea-bed mineral resources by means of a pipe, and which—

(a) is fixed to the seabed by means of steel jackets, concrete footings or any other means; or

(b) floats on the surface of the sea and is secured to the seabed by means of risers, anchors, or any other means, but

does not include an offshore installation to which paragraph (5) applies.

(4) For the purposes of paragraph (3) a fixed or floating production platform—

(a) includes—

(i) a non-production platform converted for use as a production platform for so long as it is so converted;

(ii) a production platform which has ceased production for so long as it is not converted to a non-production platform; and

(iii) a production platform which has not come into use; and

(b) does not include a production platform which, for a period of no more than 90 days, extracts sea-bed mineral resources from beneath the sea-bed for the purposes of well testing.

(5) For the purposes of paragraph (1) to (4), and subject to paragraph (6), references to discharges of oil or oily mixtures are references to machinery space discharges and do not include discharges of production or displacement water, or offshore processing drainage.

(6) In the case of relevant discharges from—

(a) floating production, storage and offloading facilities; or

(b) floating storage units,

the Secretary of State must, in assessing compliance with paragraph (1), take account of the Guidelines for the Application of the Revised MARPOL Annex 1 Requirements to Floating Production, Storage and Offloading Facilities and Floating Storage Units(2).

(7) For the purposes of paragraph (6), “relevant discharges” means discharges of oil or oily mixtures not discharged through the production stream which are—

(a) machinery space discharges; or

(b) discharges of contaminated seawater from operational purposes such as produced oil tank cleaning water, produced oil tank hydrostatic testing water or water from ballasting of a produced oil tank to carry out inspection by rafting.

(1)

1964 c. 29. Section 1(7) is amended by the Oil and Gas (Enterprise) Act 1982 (c. 23), Schedule 3, paragraph 1 and the Energy Act 2011 (c. 16), section 103. See the Continental Shelf (Designation of Areas) Order 2013 (S.I. 2013/3162).

(2)

Adopted by the Marine Environment Protection Committee of the IMO on 22nd July 2005 by Resolution MEPC.139(53), amended by Resolution MEPC.142(54) adopted on 24th March 2006. Copies of the resolutions may be obtained from the IMO Library and in hard copy from the Maritime and Coastguard Agency.