On The Legal Attributes Of Offshore Drilling Platform

Offshore oil industry constantly moves from shoal to deep ocean, the risk of oil spill also increases. As the core of the offshore oil industry, Offshore Drilling Platform is high-profile due to the catastrophic consequences caused by shocking oil spill accidents. However, the present academia is difficult to achieve breakthrough in the research field of vision, the definition in the current law is still a matter of discussion, thecriteria in the judicial practice is hard to unify, all of these lead to difficulties in ascertaining Offshore Drilling Platform’ legal attributes and directly hindered the unification of maritime pollution legislation process. Compared with the active legislation attempts of international community and the relatively mature oil pollution governance practice abroad, our country is hard to hold a candle. In the lesson of Bohai Bay oil pollution accident, our country’s legislation should break the situation of "valuing the vessel, neglecting the platform", promote to establish unified Oil Pollution Law, which governs Vessel and Offshore Drilling Platform.This paper attempts to confirm the relationship between Vessel and Offshore Drilling Platform with the entry point of the latter’s legal attributes. And based on that, this paper tries to discuss the choice on the legislative mode of Chinese Oil Pollution Law. Besides the preface and conclusion, this paper consists of four chapters as following:The first chaptersketches out the elementary knowledge and the research status of Offshore Drilling Platform. The elementary knowledge will be introduced firstly, and then the controversy of "if Offshore Drilling Platform is a vessel or not" will be put forward, research status of Offshore Drilling Platform and four theories of academia will be introduced.The second chapter sorts out the relevant international conventions and laws related to the Vessel, Offshore Drilling Platform and Marine Pollution on a global scale, interprets the definition clauses and Offshore Drilling Platform’s special provisions in the legal contexts, studies on whether the concept of Vessel covers Offshore Drilling Platform or not.The third chapter studies from the judicial practice, on one hand, this chapter studies the relevant cases in the common law countries and tries to establish the norms of identifying a Vessel’s attributes, on the other hand, this chapter studies the relevant cases in foreign countries and tries to establish the adjudicate norms of Offshore Drilling Platform’s legal attributes. Based on the above, this chapter contrasts the identifying norms between Vessel and Offshore Drilling Platform, analyzes the relationship between the both.The fourth chapter analyzes the reasons of difficulties in unifying Offshore Drilling Platform’s legal attributes on the basis of summarizing contexts and combining with the practice. This chapter also confirms the legal attributes of Offshore Drilling Platform and finally analyzes the shortage of our country’s oil pollution legislations, provides useful advice for the legislative mode of Chinese Oil Pollution Law.