Owners, builders and Class unite on BWTS

The annual tripartite meeting in Busan, Korea was hosted by the Korean Register of Shipping and KOSHIPA, the national shipbuilders association. The meeting was united in expressing its serious concern with the obstacles that all three parties face as the IMO Ballast Water Management Convention moves closer to ratification, eight years after its text was adopted.

A statement issued jointly by ICS, IACS, BIMCO, Intercargo, Intertanko, OCIMF and CESS (Committee for Expertise of Shipbuilding Specifics) says: “It was always going to be challenging to fit ballast water treatment equipment to all of the world’s 70,000 ships. New technologies needed to be explored and developed to treat the volume of water required by ocean going ships as ballast. However the slow pace of ratification by IMO member States has negated the carefully staged implementation programme that was a feature of the original Convention. Now that the fixed timeline for implementation has passed without entry into force it means that, as soon as the Ballast Water Management Convention does meet its ratification criteria, thousands of ships will need to be fitted in a very short time.

“Whilst strenuous efforts were made by industry, this will put unattainable demands on ship repair facilities, engineering capabilities and on the relatively small number of manufacturers that have developed suitable treatment equipment.”

The meeting also expressed serious concerns about type-approval requirements. Having now gained some experience with the current requirements, participants expressed the opinion that many serious shortcomings now need urgent attention. If nothing is done to address this situation, a very large number of treatment equipments costing billions of dollars may be required to be installed on ships with the prior knowledge that these systems may not always work reliably to the demanded biological efficacy. “Not least of the problems is that the certified performance criteria of sophisticated new treatment equipment seems to fall short of testing requirements that may be applied by port state control authorities. Much more work still needs to be done by governments to rectify the current situation,” says the statement.

“We note that IMO decided not to reopen the G8 guidelines but asked BLG 17 to look into certification guidance on the G8 guideline with the aim of providing greater clarity on the operating conditions in which BWTS are expected to operate. Factors to be taken into account include seawater salinity, temperature and sediment load, as well as operation at flow rates significantly lower that the rated treatment flow rate. IMO also asked member States to submit case studies with quantitative evidence of BWTS failures to improve understanding of the areas of weakness within the approval process.

“While this is a step in the right direction, the BWM Convention was designed to assure the ability to meet the required standard by a treatment system installed on an operating vessel. Having requirements that ensure the equipment is fit for purpose is an important element in achieving successful implementation.” said IACS Chairman, Tom Boardley.

The Tripartite meeting agreed that the industry is faced with a challenge both in respect to the timeline and to the lack of maturity of individual treatment systems. One mitigating factor would be to define existing ships as those having been constructed prior to entry into force of the Convention, and that retrofitting of type approved ballast water management systems should not be required until the next full fiveyear survey, rather than the next intermediate survey.

Speaking at the end of the Tripartite meeting ICS chairman Masamichi Morooka said: “It is good that many governments now seem to understand the shipowners’ arguments that it will be very difficult indeed to retrofit tens of thousands of ships within the timeline of two or three years of entry into force, as the Convention text currently requires. IMO has agreed to develop an IMO Assembly Resolution, for adoption in 2013, to smooth the implementation.”

“It is vital that we ease the log jam by spreading implementation over five years rather than two or three.” said Dave Iwamoto, chairman of CESS.