The purpose of this guidance is to protect seafarers, the ship and cargo and, to facilitate threat and risk assessment and planning for voyages transiting areas where the threat of attack by pirates and armed robbers exists.

General Rules for Tankers, Owned or Operating in the USA, 2025 Edition, is edited and compiled from over 15,000 pages of regulations directly related to shipping, contained in the United States Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). These are the codification of the general and permanent rules of the U.S. Federal Government, which in their entirety number over 200,000 pages of information.