Offshore law
Offshore installations rise in numbers and importance and promise high economic and scientific benefits, but they also increase risks of accidents and environmental damage. They offer profits, promise gains, and sometimes they bring about disasters.
The Deepwater Horizon incident in the Gulf of Mexico has dramatically highlighted the gaps and weaknesses of the existing international legal framework concerning how to prevent, deal with and mitigate the consequences of similar environmental disasters. It has also poignantly illustrated the limits of the legal framework, which is fragmented along the lines of different geographical areas, different sectors of activities and, notably, different fields of law.