Alternative fuels should be explored

Speaking at the recent Mediterranean Bunker Fuel Conference in Barcelona, Simon Bennett, director of policy & external relations, ICS, said that the shipping industry will be investing billions of dollars in order to ensure compliance with this major regulatory change.

“It therefore seems only fair that governments should implement the rules in a uniform manner as we enter a brave new world in which fuel costs for some ships will increase overnight by around 50%,” he said.

He pointed out that unlike Europe, the US has made its approach to enforcement relatively clear. Providing false information to the authorities is a criminal offence and attracts the possibility of multi-million dollar fines.

Looking forward to the implementation of the global sulphur cap, most likely in 2020, the ICS said it was still unknown whether significant numbers of ships would make use of options for alternative compliance instead of burning low sulphur fuel, a provision which ICS had fought hard for during the negotiations at IMO when the MARPOL amendments were adopted.

And Mr Bennett said there is still a need for a harmonised approach about the acceptability of ‘closed loop’ and ‘open loop’ systems, and the extent to which overboard discharges would be subject to inspection.

With respect to sulphur-free LNG, while new some ships were being fitted with dual fuel systems, Mr Bennett suggested that for most existing vessels the engineering involved would probably be too costly to encourage retrofitting.

The other major unknown was the extent to which the current lack of LNG infrastructure will be addressed before 2020. Apart from uncertainly about the comparative costs of LNG and distillate, there are also uncertainties about the future of the US shale gas revolution.