Legal Grounds for an Oil Spill Claim
A spill of oil or petroleum products is a textbook case of damage inflicted on the environment, and Georgian environmental legislation places the obligation to compensate that damage squarely on the polluter. Under the Law of Georgia on Environmental Protection, a claim arising from an oil spill rests on a unified system of principles that binds state authorities and every natural and legal person, whatever their form of ownership or legal organisation, to be guided by the basic principles of environmental protection when planning and carrying out their activities. An oil spill dispute is therefore not merely a question of a factual accident: it is assessed through the statutory principles, the powers of state control, and the compensation obligations established by law.
The law enumerates the basic principles of environmental protection in detail: the risk reduction principle, the sustainability principle, the priority principle, paid nature use, the polluter pays principle, preservation of biological diversity, waste minimisation, recycling, restitution, environmental impact assessment, public participation in decision-making, and accessibility of information. In an oil spill claim the workhorses are the polluter pays principle, the restitution principle and the impact assessment principle, because together they establish who must pay, to what standard the environment must be restored, and why the operator cannot claim ignorance of the risk it created.