Oil spill pollution: a Brazilian experience

Brazil is a huge country and it has a great range of marine coast which contain a rich marine environment. However the exploration of petroleum in its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), Continental Shelf (CS), Contiguous Zone (CZ) and Territorial Sea (TS) is very important for the development of Brazil. It can become an extremely competitive State on the international trade scenery which will attract the attention of foreign investors1. Challenges have aroused mainly because of the traffic of ships and platforms which are involved in the production, transportation and logistics of oil that will increase - quite significantly - in the coming years. The risk of oil pollution rises at the same time that the number of aforesaid vessels increase, but the marine environmental pollution has been decreasing. One can see this decrease through the statistics (Annex 1) of International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation (ITOPF), where in the last decades, one can observe that in the 1970s the risk was from 56 %, in the 1980s went down to21%, in the 1990s it was 20% and until 2000s,2 it is 3%.