Company: TEN-PE
Filing Date: 2025-04-11
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0001193125-25-079101
Chunk: 70

Company: TSAKOS ENERGY NAVIGATION LTD
Filing Date: 2025-04-11
Form: 20-F
Item: Item 4
Chunk 70
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 ships must keep on board an Inventory of Hazardous Materials that is prepared, verified and updated in line with IMO guidelines. The IMO MEPC has adopted various guidelines relating and ancillary to the Hong Kong Convention.

  US Laws and Regulations  

  The U. S. Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (“ OPA 90”)  

OPA 90. The U. S. Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (“ OPA 90”) established an extensive regulatory and liability regime for the protection and clean-up of the environment from oil spills. OPA 90 affects all owners and operators whose vessels trade to the U. S. or its territories or possessions or whose vessels operate in U. S. waters, which include the U. S.’s territorial sea and its two hundred nautical mile exclusive economic zone. The USCG is the lead federal agency that enforces OPA 90.

Under OPA 90, vessel owners, operators and bareboat charterers are “responsible parties” and are jointly, severally and strictly liable (unless the oil spill results solely from the act or omission of a third-party, an act of God or an act of war and the responsible party reports the incident and reasonably cooperates with the appropriate authorities) for all containment and clean-up costs and other damages arising from discharges or threatened discharges of oil from their vessels. Tsakos Shipping and Tsakos Energy Management would not qualify as “third-parties” because they perform under contracts with us. OPA 90 follows a “polluter pays” principle, and as such, the responsible party is liable for damages under OPA 90 up to statutory liability limits. OPA 90 does allow the responsible party to recover against a third-party based on contractual indemnity or via contribution.

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OPA 90 allows for the recovery of a broad category of damages, which are defined broadly to include (1) natural resources damages and the related assessment costs, (2) real and personal property damages, (3) net loss of taxes, royalties, rents, fees and other lost revenues, (4) lost profits or impairment of earning capacity due to property or natural resources damage, (5) net cost of public services necessitated by a spill response, such as protection from fire, safety or health hazards, and (6) loss of subsistence use of natural resources. OPA 90 also expressly excludes the economic loss rule that would normally require a proprietary interest in property before allowing for