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Bill to protect HK in serious oil pollution damage cases
The Government will introduce the Merchant Shipping (Liability and Compensation for Oil Pollution) (Amendment) Bill 1997 to protect Hong Kong and owners of Hong Kong registered ships, a spokesman for Marine Department said today (Wednesday).
The Bill gives effects to the amendments made under the two 1992 Protocols which entered into force internationally on May 30 last year.
In January 1997, the Chinese side of the Joint Liaison Group agreed that the two 1992 protocols should be extended to Hong Kong and that they should continue to apply to the HK Special Administrative Region after June 30 this year.
The spokesman said that liability and compensation for oil pollution damage caused in the territory, including territorial sea of Contracting States by sea-going ships were governed by two International Maritime Organisation (IMO) Conventions.
These two Conventions are the International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage, 1969 (the 1969 Liability Convention) and the International Convention on the Establishment of an International Fund for Compensation for Oil Pollution Damage, 1971 (the 1971 Fund Convention).
In 1992, IMO adopted two Protocols to amend the 1969 Liability Convention and the 1971 Fund Convention which takes effect world-wide in mid-1996.
The spokesman further noted that shipowners in Hong Kong were much concerned about a possible reciprocal foreign court judgement from a country which was not a party to the Liability Convention which might give a judgement awarding compensation for oil pollution damage for an amount greatly in excess of the liability limit of a shipowner under the Liability Convention.
"We therefore take this opportunity to include a new provision to limit the damage from a reciprocal judgement claim to a level in accordance with the limit under the Liability Convention, notwithstanding that the damages awarded by a court in a country which is not a party to the Convention are in excess of that limit," the spokesman said.
The spokesman further outlined the main provisions of the Amendment Bill, noting that it amended various definitions according to the 1992 Protocols and includes new definitions to terms such as incident, Monetary Authority, oil, relevant threat of contamination and the 1992 Protocols.