Proposed changes include a much more vigilant IMO type-approval testing regime for new systems than the current “G8” guidelines, as well as implementing as-yet-undefined protection (although avoiding the term “grandfathering”) for “early-movers” who will have installed BWM systems before the revised guidelines are applied.
“What we need now,” Intertanko Asia-Pacific regional manager Tim Wilkins tells Seatrade Global, “is for those early movers to come forward. I’m giving technical seminars to my members in Asia, and explaining that the industry’s side of the bargain is to highlight the areas of concern you may not have alerted us to previously.
“If you’ve installed a system and you’ve come across a certain problem, and you’ve had to modify it in some way, how could that be overcome with a more stringent type approval process? How could we have tweaked those G8 guidelines to avoid systems coming on the market with this problem in the future?”
Up to this point, both Intertanko and ICS have advised their members to hold off on investing in new, G8-approved systems; as ICS secretary general, Peter Hinchliffe, explains: “If the equipment has already been type approved, there’s no guarantee it will work in all oceanographic conditions. With the [G8] type-approval system, you didn’t need to test it in salt and brackish water and in hot and cold climates.”
“There was and still is a lack of confidence in this convention. When it began in 2004, it was very aspirational. There was no treatment on the shelf at that time, and the convention featured a number of fixed dates – many of them have already passed. Those fixed dates would be meaningless now.”
But IMO’s commitment to protect early adopters recognises that a marginally-less than optimal system is better than no system at all, an admission that will doubtless spur a few additional investments: even the most cash-strapped shipowner would rather shell out $5m for one BWM system than $10-15m on a long game of PSC trial-and-error. But Hinchliffe maintains shipping is not out of the woods yet. “Can shipowners now be confident the G8-approved systems will pass muster with PSC authorities? There’s no black and white answer to that. We’re happy that the revisions agreed at the MEPC included the idea that first-movers will not be penalised, but we still need to establish precisely what ‘not being penalised’ actually means.”
Explains Wilkins: “One of the things several member states said was ‘we can’t say what this protection will look like until we see how big the revisions are to the G8 guidelines. Will all these systems have to be type-approved again? Some may have to, some may not - it depends on how big the changes are.” This is where the early-movers come in, he adds. “It will stem from how much information we can get on top of what has been provided already.”
Neither Hinchliffe nor Wilkins could say for certain why IMO changed course despite having had ratifications from Jordan, Japan and Turkey in quick succession. “At [MEPC 66] there was a lot of opposition to our proposals,” says Hinchliffe. “Since then, we’ve had a lot of discussion with governments between the two meetings, and established that our objective wasn’t for our members to avoid responsibility, but actually to increase confidence in the convention’s effectiveness.”
Wilkins adds: “We’ve actually been pushing for this for about two-and-a-half-years, since MEPC 63. We’ve seen what happened in the US – their legislation came into force in December last year… whether the fact that more and more administrations were receiving information from the shipowning community that these systems were not reaching the requirements… we can only speculate really. I hope it was from the sheer weight of evidence.”
But while some might see the move as a U-turn, the victory is as much for IMO as for groups like ICS and Intertanko: the opportunity not only to challenge those who say it is not representative of the industry, but a chance to silence the Convention’s biggest detractor – the US.
“IMO have said they’ll take into account the type-approval standards in other countries,” says Wilkins. “Well, there is only one other country.
“What I would hope is that they can see the gaps – why the US doesn’t feel IMO’s standards are good enough – and fill those gaps. What we’ll end up with is an IMO type-approval process ‘Version 2.0’ that looks very much like what the US Coast Guard have in place today.
“If I’m really optimistic, it would be nice if the US decided to accept systems type-approved under the new IMO procedure: one international type-approval standard that meets everyone’s requirements including those of the US.”
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