EMEA News
ICS: Global 0.5% Sulfur Cap "Very Likely to be Implemented in 2020"
A global 0.5 percent sulfur cap on marine fuel is likely to come into effect in 2020, not 2025 as some shippers may have hoped, warns the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS).
“While postponement of the sulphur global cap until 2025 is still a possibility, the shipping and oil refining industries should not assume that this will happen simply because they are unprepared," said ICS Chairman Masamichi Morooka.
"ICS has concluded that, for better or worse, the global cap is very likely to be implemented in 2020, almost regardless of the effect that any lack of availability of compliant fuel may have on the cost of moving world trade by sea."
Though the regulations are currently slated to come into effect beginning in 2020, the date may be pushed back to 2025 subject to a review planned for 2018.
But the ICS says that if the review concludes there will be supply issues, that date will be far too late for governments to take action on the matter, meaning that in effect, a political decision may in effect already have been taken on the matter.
"In theory, if the global cap was not implemented until 2025, this would create a narrow corridor along the coast of North Africa in which ships could continue to burn less expensive residual fuel with a sulphur content of 3.5 percent," said the ICS, who added that it was likely that the EU would push hard at the IMO to ensure that such a scenario didn't occur.
Late last year, oil major BP said at SIBCON 2014 that a 2020 start date to the 0.5 percent cap was feasible.
