Short title and commencement
(1) This Act may be cited as the Merchant Shipping (Oil Pollution) Act 1994. (2) This Act shall come into force on such date as the Minister may, by notification in the Gazette, appoint and the Minister may appoint different dates for different provisions of this Act.
Interpretation
(1) In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires— “authorized officer” means a port officer as defined in section 2 of the Merchant Shipping Ordinance 1952 [Ord. 70 of 1952] or any authorized officer under section 25; “Court” means the High Court in Malaya and the High Court in Sabah and Sarawak, as the case may be; “Director of Marine” means the Director of Marine appointed under subsection 8(1) of the Merchant Shipping Ordinance 1952; “exclusive economic zone”, in relation to Malaysia, is the exclusive economic zone determined under the Exclusive Economic Zone Act 1984 [Act 311]; “incident” means any occurrence, or series of occurrences having the same origin, which causes pollution damage or creates a grave and imminent threat of causing such damage; “Liability Convention” means the International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage signed in London on 27 November 1992; “Liability Convention country” means a country in respect of which the Liability Convention is in force; “master” has the same meaning assigned to it under the Merchant Shipping Ordinance 1952; “Minister” means the Minister charged with the responsibility for merchant shipping; “oil”, except in Part III, means any persistent hydrocarbon mineral oil such as crude oil, fuel oil, heavy diesel oil and lubricating oil, whether carried on board a ship as cargo or in the bunkers of such a ship; “owner” means the person registered as the owner of the ship or, in the absence of registration, the person or persons owning the ship, except that in relation to a ship owned by a State and operated by a company which in that State is registered as the ship’s operator, “owner” shall mean such company; “person” means any individual or partnership or any public or private body, whether corporate or not, including a State or any of its constituent subdivisions; “pollution damage” means— (a) loss or damage caused outside a ship by contamination resulting from the discharge or escape of oil from the ship, wherever such discharge or escape may occur, provided that compensation for impairment of the environment other than loss of profit from such impairment shall be limited to costs and reasonable measures of reinstatement actually undertaken or to be undertaken; (b) the costs of preventive measures and further loss or damage caused by preventive measures; “port” means— (a) a port or place declared to be a port under the Merchant Shipping Ordinance 1952 or under any other written law; (b) a place prescribed as a port under the Merchant Shipping Ordinance 1960 of Sabah [Sabah Ord. 11 of 1960], the Merchant Shipping Ordinance 1960 of Sarawak [Sarawak Ord. 2 of 1960] and regulations made thereunder; “preventive measures” means any reasonable measures taken by any person after an incident has occurred to prevent or minimize pollution damage; “ship” means any sea going vessel and seaborne craft of any type constructed or adapted for the carriage of oil in bulk as cargo, provided that a ship capable of carrying oil and other cargoes shall be regarded as a ship only when it is actually carrying oil in bulk as cargo and during any voyage following such carriage unless it is proved that it has no residues of such carriage of oil in bulk aboard; “terminal installation” means any site for the storage of oil in bulk which is capable of receiving oil from waterborne transportation, including any facility situated offshore and linked to any such site; “territorial sea” means the territorial waters of Malaysia determined in accordance with the Emergency (Essential Powers) Ordinance, No. 7 of 1969 [P.U. (A) 307A/1969]. (2) In relation to any pollution damage resulting from the discharge or escape of any oil from a ship, references in this Act to the owner of the ship are references to the owner at the time of the incident or, if the incident consists of a series of occurrences having the same origin, at the time of the first such occurrence. (3) For the purposes of this Act— (a) references to any area of Malaysia include the territorial sea of Malaysia and exclusive economic zone of Malaysia and references to any area of any other Liability Convention country include the territorial sea and the exclusive economic zone of that Liability Convention country; and (b) references to the exclusive economic zone of a country are references to the exclusive economic zone of that country established in accordance with international law, or, if such a zone has not been established, such area adjacent to the territorial sea of that country determined by that country in accordance with international law and extending not more than 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured. (4) For the purposes of this Act, the ship’s tonnage shall be the gross tonnage calculated in accordance with the tonnage measurement regulations contained in annex I of the International Convention on Tonnage Measurement of Ships signed in London on 23 June1969.
Provisions on this page are reproduced verbatim from official open data. See the attribution line.
Text as at 1 January 2006 (LOM reprint); amendments made after that date may not be incorporated. Read the official text ↗
Source: Laws of Malaysia, Attorney General's Chambers of Malaysia (lom.agc.gov.my). Not a copy of the Gazette printed by the Government Printer (Interpretation Acts 1948 and 1967, s 61).