The Guidelines for the provisional assessment of liquids
transported in bulk (hereafter referred to as "the Guidelines") were
approved by the Organization's Marine Environment Protection Committee
(MEPC) at its thirtieth session. The Guidelines were originally circulated
under MEPC/Circ.238 in March 1991 and were incorporated into the 1991
Consolidated Edition of MARPOL 73/78 (International Convention for
the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, 1973, as modified by the Protocol
of 1978 relating thereto).
The Guidelines were approved in conjunction with the extension
of the unified interpretation of regulation 3(4) (now regulation 6.3) of Annex II of
MARPOL 73/78, which made it possible for the Administrations of the
States producing or shipping mixtures of pollution hazard-only substances
already assessed by IMO to authorize the manufacturer to carry out
the assessment of the mixture on its behalf. Also, the Guidelines
provided the step-by-step procedures for ascertaining the carriage
requirements of all liquids offered for bulk carriage.
Having taken into consideration the reformatting of the
1991 Consolidated Edition of MARPOL 73/78 into
the 1997 Consolidated Edition (whereby non-mandatory information,
such as the Guidelines, was removed), the Secretariat decided to publish
the Guidelines as a separate stand-alone IMO publication.
This publication includes the amendments to the Guidelines
adopted by the MEPC at its thirty-third session on 30 October 1992.