Pooling does not guarantee that individual ships do not pay a penalty – one can assign the compliance balance to each ship in different ways, ending up with deficits on some vessels and surpluses on others. Allocation of compliance is decided by pool members and needs to follow three basic rules:

• The total pool compliance balance must be positive
• Ships with a deficit before pooling do not have a higher deficit after pooling
• Ships with a surplus before pooling do not have deficit after pooling