The Issues related to the Juridical Status of Offshore Oil Platforms and Rigs in the Law of the Sea and Maritime Law

The topic concerning the legal status and regime of offshore oil platforms and rigs is still an important and unsolved issue since the development of this kind of crafts. The question arises from the absence – at the international level, but in certain cases also in the domestic law – of a uniform and exhaustive regime specific for these crafts that show a great variety of structures and purposes. It is interesting to note that, especially after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, only regional uniform rules, but not international uniform conventions, have been enacted in order to specifically address the issue of oil spill from offshore platforms and rigs. Some domestic legal systems assimilate oil rigs to ships for the enforcement of the provisions on the protection of the marine environment and the penalties for its pollution. Moreover, they could be engaged in severalactivities, such as exploration/research/measurement, drilling, production of oil, processing/treatment, storage or loading: while performing the different activities the oil rig is subject to the specific regime provided for each activity by the international law and the relevant domestic law. Their regime depends also on the place where they are located, together with their status as ships or other crafts: for example, under the Law of the Sea, when they are in the Territorial Sea, in the Contiguous Zone, in the Exclusive Economic Zone and/or on the Continental Shelf of a State, if they are considered as ships they fall within the jurisdiction of the flag State for activities other than the economic activities and marine scientific research there performed and with the exclusion of the protection and preservation of the marine environment that belong to the jurisdiction of the coastal State, whereas if they are deemed to be installations they fall in the latter’s jurisdiction with different consequences depending on the zone where they aresituated. Being destined to perform their activities in oceans or seasand to travel in these environmentsfor this purpose, they are also subject – at different levels, depending on their actual structures and activities – to the perils of the sea like ships: one of the main current issues concerning these structures is still the possibility to qualify them or some of them as ships or to apply to them their regime. Notwithstanding that this question is not new, no uniform satisfying solution has been reached yet: only for specific subject-mattersoil platforms and rigs or certain types of them have been expressly included in the scope of some international conventions or domestic law or have been equalized to ships or to fixed installations by them, leading to a fragmentary framework. It has already been efficaciously evidenced by distinguished scholars that a uniform and clear definition of the very object and means of carriage in Maritime Law – i.e. the ‘ship’ – still lacks, notwithstanding shipping’s millenary development, too( ): whereas in the past it was a more self-evident concept( ), the technical evolution of this means of transport has increased its complexity. The main difficulties arise not only from the evolution of ships or nautical structures from a technical point of view, with the development of means and structures with very different purposes and features (including oil platforms and rigs), but also from the complexity of a ‘ship’ from the legal perspective. Italian scholars have displayed it with the terms «juridical pluri-qualification» of this unique entity, but this view is also by other international Authors: from a static point of view, she is a good which is relevant under an economic and legal perspective; from a dynamic point of view, she is a registered movable property; she is also an organized system of persons and goods often destined to commercial activities; she is a vehicle; in Common Law, for example, she has legal personality; she is considered as a part of the territory of the flag State, etc. The above arguments are more over true with regard to oil platforms and rigs, due to the already described variety of structures, purposes and activities they can be engaged in. This article deals with a survey of the existing relevant international rules, a case study and a comparative analysis of the status of these structures in some domestic legal systems, in order to outline the existing criticalities and revise the possible solutions according also to contemporary challenges.