ICS comments on IMO BWM status

However, ICS feels that the type approval process for expensive new treatment equipment is seriously flawed and that much more work still needs to be done by governments to rectify the current situation. Shipowners are being required to invest billions of dollars in new treatment systems that may not always work in practice.

ICS secretary general, Peter Hinchliffe, said: “It is good that many governments seem to accept shipowners’ arguments that it will be very difficult indeed to retrofit tens of thousands of ships within the timeline of two or three years after entry into force as the convention text currently requires. IMO has agreed to develop an IMO assembly resolution, for adoption in 2013, to facilitate implementation to work smoothly.”

“It is vital that we ease the log jam by spreading implementation over five years rather than two or three.” said Mr Hinchliffe.

ICS adds that it is disappointed that many shipowner concerns about the robustness of the type approval process have been disregarded or sidelined during the MEPC meeting. “The BWM convention was designed to assure the ability to meet the required standard by a treatment system installed on an operating vessel, not in the vacuum of a test facility.” said Mr Hinchliffe.

ICS contends that enforcement and compliance actions will not be taken against treatment system manufacturers or test facilities, but rather against shipowners who in good faith may have installed a type approved system that when subject to the variables in a real life operating environment may fail to perform as required. A robustly type-approved system, costing between $1 million and $5 million per ship, should, says ICS, reasonably be expected to operate effectively under all of the normal operating conditions encountered at sea.