The ringing in of the New Year has seen single-hulled oil tankers officially barred from United States waters, reports Environmental News Service (ENS).
The January 1 2015 deadline comes from the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which was passed in the wake of the notorious Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska a year earlier.
The legislation stipulated that all future oil tanker and tanker barge newbuildings be built using double-hull methods to drastically curb the likelihood of similar-scale oil spills, continued ENS.
According to the United States' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, due to the inability to convert already-built single-hull tankers into double-hulls, the legislation had a lengthy 2.5-decade phase-in period, which permitted older single-hulled vessels to be retired without significant disruption to global trade, said ENS.
Thus, the deadline did not cause a significant disruption, with the majority of oil vessels already sporting double-hulls by 2014.
Source: ENS
