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GE Shipping earmarks $50m for scrubbers and BWTS

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India’s The Great Eastern Shipping (GE Shipping) has earmarked up to $50m over the next four years to upgrade its fleet for compliance with IMO’s regulations on low-sulphur fuels and ballast water treatment systems (BWTS).

The plan for GE Shipping is to spend about $20m on fitting scrubbers on seven of its biggest ships, mostly large crude tankers, by December 2019, and another $30m on installing BWTS between 2019 and 2014 on all ships, according to G Shivakumar, executive director and cfo of the company, cited by the local media.

GE Shipping operates a fleet of 48 ships.

Shivakumar noted that for BWTS, it will cost $1.5m to $2m to install it on a large tanker. “That is something you have to keep in mind because you do not get any (cost) benefit from that,” he was reported saying.

Read more: Operating problems with 60 - 80% of ballast water treatment systems: Intertanko

“When you install a scrubber, you get a cost saving because the high-sulphur fuel oil is much cheaper than the low-sulphur fuel and currently that spread is being quoted at about $320 per tonne for 2020 and 2021.”

He added that fitting scrubbers works much better on bigger ships which sail for more days and require high fuel consumption.

Read more: Scorpio details $122m in scrubber orders for tankers and bulkers

In BWTS, it is just spending money to keep running the operation. “Then, you have to think about whether it makes sense to spend that $1.5m to $2m extra at all. And that is something that could have a big impact on scrapping (globally),” he was quoted saying.