Oil Pollution Act

33 U.S.C. 2702 to 2761

The Oil Pollution Act (OPA) of 1990 streamlined and strengthened EPA’s ability to prevent and respond to catastrophic oil spills.  A trust fund financed by a tax on oil is available to clean up spills when the responsible party is incapable or unwilling to do so.  The OPA requires oil storage facilities and vessels to submit to the Federal government  plans detailing how they will respond to large discharges.   EPA has published regulations for aboveground storage facilities; the Coast Guard has done so for oil tankers.  The OPA also requires the development of Area Contingency Plans to prepare and plan for oil spill response on a regional scale.

Full text of the Oil Pollution Act

The full text version of this law is hosted by Cornell University. This collection was generated from the most recent version of the Government Printing Office CD-ROM. The Government Printing Office maintains the official government version of the laws through the GPO Access database structure.

The U.S. Code is the official record of all federal laws and contains the general and permanent laws of the United States. The most recent version of the U.S. Code released in electronic form contains the laws in effect as of January 16, 1996. For more recent laws, please see the uncompiled Public Laws as passed by Congress available through the Thomas Legislative Information Web site.

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