Thank you.
I think there are a couple of considerations. When the whole regime was first established in the 1950s or 1960s, the concern was that there was not a lot of knowledge of this new technology, and insurers were very uncertain about being able to provide insurance to the industry. Therefore, the only way they were willing to provide insurance was on a channelled basis, whereby they consolidated all their capacity and provided it to one individual. That was the operator.
There was also a concern that because this was a new technology and it would be very difficult for victims to prove the operator was negligent, etc., it was determined that to ease that compensation it would be an absolute liability regime.
I want to point out also that there's a similar kind of regime in the marine transport of oil.