It is estimated that approximately 706 million gallons of waste oil enter the ocean every year. With this, we can imagine the extent of pollution, Oil tankers transport some 3 Billion tonnes of crude oil and oil products every year around the world by sea.
Now coming to the main question – Various steps taken by IMO to control pollution.
Measures introduced by IMO have helped ensure that the majority of oil tankers are safely built and operated and are constructed to reduce the amount of oil spilled in the event of an accident. Operational pollution, such as from routine tank cleaning operations, has also been cut.
Marpol one of the most important regulation came in force in 1983, have been a success. Statistics from reputable industry and independent bodies showing that these regulations, along with other safety-related regulations such as the introduction of mandatory traffic separation schemes and international standards for seafarer training, have been instrumental in the continuous decline of accidental oil pollution that has taken place over the last 30 years.
Through Marpol IMO introduced a number of radically new concepts,The requirement for new oil tankers to be fitted with segregated ballast tanks.
As far as operational oil pollution is concerned, the many innovations introduced by MARPOL on allowable discharges of bilge water through the oily water separator (with the well-known 15ppm standard), or oily waters from the cargo tanks, through the oil discharge and monitoring system, have contributed greatly to a noticeable decrease in the pollution of the world’s seas.