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<p>The UK, together with international partners, has implemented extensive sanctions
against Russia following its illegal invasion of Ukraine. These include sanctions
which have targeted oil, Russia’s greatest source of revenue.</p><p> </p><p>Illegal
circumvention of those sanctions is unacceptable, which is why the Government is seeking
multilateral action through the International Maritime Organization (IMO), such as
the recent resolution on ship-to-ship (STS) transfers at sea by the dark fleet, which
was co-sponsored by the UK and other G7 nations to tackle the environmental risk.
This resolution presents strong recommendations to improve awareness and monitoring
of STS transfers in countries’ waters, stronger adherence to international regulations
and conventions, and a greater awareness of the fraudulent and deceptive activities
by vessels in the ‘dark fleet’. Through these actions, the Government intends to highlight
on the global stage the illegality of Russia’s actions and reduce the pollution risk
by outlining the strong response that will be delivered to violations of sanctions.</p><p>
</p><p>Alongside this, the UK is a state party to the International Oil Pollution
Compensation Funds, which provides financial compensation for oil pollution damage
that occurs in Member States resulting from spills of oil from tankers and includes
situations where the oil tanker does not have valid insurance.</p><p> </p><p>The UK
has well-established plans/protocols for the response to an oil spill. The Maritime
and Coastguard Agency (MCA) is the National Competent Authority for at-sea pollution
response. The MCA Counter Pollution and Salvage (CPS), under the direction of HM Coastguard,
are custodians of the national pollution response resources which comprise specialist
oil containment and recovery equipment and dispersant. These are supported by manned
aircraft for spill surveillance, verification and quantification and a suite of aerial
dispersant spraying capability. Personnel and resources are in place 24 hours a day,
365 days of the year and provide an incident management and response capability anywhere
within the UK’s Exclusive Economic Zone. Regular exercises are undertaken to test
national multi-agency spill response procedures.</p><p> </p><p>The MCA does not have
responsibility for pollution response on the UK shoreline; this is vested in the local
authorities and devolved nations. However, the MCA CPS will support pollution response
along the UK shoreline using the other nationally held containment and recovery capability
held in the stockpiles. Incident management, specialist response teams, and liaison
personnel are also available. As with at-sea pollution response, regular engagement
with local authorities in response exercises is undertaken. The resources held by
the MCA are those commensurate with a Tier 3 national response requirement as described
within the National Contingency Plan for Pollution from Shipping and Offshore Installations.</p>
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