Decision ID: 003689

In October 1999 the 1992 Fund Assembly decided to endorse the conclusions of the 2nd intersessional Working Group regarding the applicability of the 1992 Conventions to offshore craft, namely floating storage units (FSUs) and floating production storage and offloading units (FPSOs), which were as follows:

a) Offshore craft should be regarded as ‘ships’ under the 1992 Conventions only when they carried oil as cargo on a voyage to or from a port or terminal outside the oil field in which they normally operated.

b) Offshore craft would fall outside the scope of the 1992 Conventions when they left an offshore oil field for operational reasons or simply to avoid bad weather.

The Assembly emphasised that in any event the decision as to whether the 1992 Conventions applied to a specific incident would be taken in the light of the particular circumstances of that case. It was noted that the issue could be reconsidered if new information were to come to light.

The Assembly also considered the application of the 1992 Conventions to unladen tankers on the basis of the Working Group’s conclusions and a document submitted by Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The Assembly decided, in view of the limited time that had been available to consider the latter document, to instruct the Director to reconvene the Working Group for a further one day meeting. The Director was invited to carry out a further study, with particular emphasis on the ramifications of the proposal by Australia et al.