ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT: INPUT SOUGHT ON OFFSHORE BUNKERING REGULATIONS

ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT: INPUT SOUGHT ON OFFSHORE BUNKERING REGULATIONS

• 21 February 2025
• Environmental Law
• SA Legal Academy

Please note: On 25 March 2025, the department gazetted a notice extending the commentary deadline to 5 May 2025.

The Department of Forestry, Fisheries & the Environment has called for input by 23 March 2025 on draft regulations intended to reduce the impact of offshore bunkering on marine biodiversity. This is noting that the proposed new regulations define ‘offshore bunkering’ as supplying fuel to a vessel at sea ‘outside an operational harbour area that has been physically modified from its original natural state’. Such operations may entail transferring oil, petroleum products, liquified petroleum gas or liquified natural gas from one vessel to another at sea.

Developed under the 2008 National Environmental Management: Integrated Coastal Management Act, among other things the draft regulations seek to:

• prohibit offshore bunkering:
  • in marine protected and critical biodiversity areas
  • within five nautical miles of their boundaries, and
  • within five nautical miles of aquaculture development zones and high-water marks
• prescribe the conditions to be met and responsibilities undertaken by bunker operators in permissible offshore bunkering areas, and
• mitigate underwater noise and oil spills.

Please click the link below for more information:

• draft regulations

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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