IMO Regulations at a glance

The new “IMO Pilot 2005” with the current regulations of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) is now available as the 5th edition for all customers of Germanischer Lloyd. All amendments to the regulatory framework of the IMO, as decided at the 79th session of the Maritime Safety Committee (MSC 79) and the 52nd session of the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC 52), have been considered in this issue.

New additions include e.g. regulations on the safety of bulk carrier in the revised Chapter XII of SOLAS (International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea) as well as the requirement to install simplified voyage data recorders (S-VDR) on cargo ships with more than 3,000 GT.

The new provisions of Annex VI to the MARPOL Convention (International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships), which come into force on 19 May and involve strict exhaust-gas regulations in internationally de-fined “sulphur emission control areas”, are also included. The use of low-sulphur fuel oil on ships applies for the

Baltic Sea from 19 May 2005, and is expected to come into effect for the North Sea from the beginning of 2007.

The 90-page “IMO Pilot” offers a ship-type specific overview of all the major changes in technical and operational IMO legislation (SOLAS, MARPOL, STCW, Load Line Convention, et al.) since the year 2000. This presentation form, with its comparison of old and new regulations, provides easy orientation and a handy reference for yards, owners, shipping companies and flag state administrations alike.

Available in English, the IMO Pilot 2005 can be requested free of charge from GL and is also available for download via the internet as a PDF file:

www.gl-group.com/brochurepdf/imo/05/Title.pdf