Intertanko: IMO Should Use Singapore Model to Shape International Standards on Fuel Quality Best Practice

Tim Wilkins says the current proposal for MEPC68 is not what the organiaation had hoped for.

INTERTANKO has called on the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) to look to Singaporean practices in order to shape its guidance for an international standard on fuel quality best practice.

Speaking on Wednesday at the Connecticut Maritime Association's Shipping 2015 conference in Stamford, Tim Wilkins, Regional Manager Asia-Pacific at INTERTANKO, said his organisation had been acting on bunker quality since 1981, and that the forthcoming MEPC 68 would be a "pivotal moment in bunker quality."

Wilkins explained that bunker quality is regulated under MARPOL Annex VI Regulation 18 in order to protect the crew, the ship, and the environment.

Despite this, in practice there is no control over the quality of bunkers, he said, and in particular there are no requirements on the supply side regarding bunker quality in terms of MARPOL Annex VI.

However, it is the ship operator's responsibility to deal with matters of compliance and any other problems that may arise from the quality or specification of marine fuel.

In 2009 INTERTANKO raised this matter with the IMO calling for "a greater degree of focus by the international organization on what's being supplied to ships and not simply what's being used by ships."

At that time, Wilkins said that based on over 50 percent of bunkers being sampled, producing over 100,000 samples tested by two different labs, it determined that poor bunker quality was responsible for nearly 1,500 incidents that had caused "some form of blackout, machine failure, or damage."

"We categorically signaled to the [IMO] that something was amiss on this basis," he said.

Wrong Direction

"Last year at MEPC 66 we had a submission by INTERTANKO and a submission by [the International Bunker Industry Association] (IBIA) calling for virtually the same thing. I think that signified a sea-change in how people are thinking about bunker quality, when you've got the suppliers and the users calling for the same thing," said Wilkins.

At MEPC 66 member states agreed the issue of marine fuel quality control prior to delivery to the ship needed to be addressed, and in October last year there was a convening of a U.S. lead correspondence group that subsequently worked on the matter.

"The correspondence group has delivered its report and unfortunately its gone in a certain direction that I don't think is necessarily where we would have hoped it would have gone," he said.

The proposal essentially gives member states three options in terms of how they would implement best practice, but Wilkins argued that the goal of the IMO should be to have "one standard, uniform international piece of legislation, or guidance, or best practice."

"By providing three different layers or options to member states in this guidance, for a start it doesn't give us a single best practice," he said.

"Secondly it just adds to perhaps, confusion as well when you start purchasing fuel. What kind of level of guidance, what kind of level of practice are you expecting from that supplier? If you're given three, four, two options, it doesn't really help, it doesn't give you that uniform standardisation."

Singapore Standard

Wilkins said that what INTERTANKO would ideally like to see is something based on an information document submitted to the IMO by Singapore, that is based on the port's current model of bunker supplier and fuel quality management.

"They are saying, look, here we go, this is what we're doing and if you develop any kind of guidance, any form of best practice, perhaps you want to think about these kinds of elements," he said.

"This is a really important document for INTERTANKO because we feel that this is the model that should form the shape of any kind of guidance from the IMO," he said.

Wilkins said the key elements of the model are:

• A regulatory basis using MARPOL Annxe VI Regulation 18.
• Nomination of a competent authority to start working on the supply of bunkers that also adopts Singapore's approach of engaging with the industry.
• Implement a licence or registration regime to increase the transparency and awareness of that competent authority.
• Use the latest revision of ISO8217 as the minimum standard of supply.
• Identify enforcement practices, such as licence cancellation policy as in Singapore.

Wilkins noted that outside of the work at MEPC and the IMO on the matter, the Port of Rotterdam has had "several meetings" with the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) to develop its own system, while Gibraltar has had a system in place monitoring their own suppliers "for a long time."

Antwerp, Gibraltar, Rotterdam, and Singapore have together also established a working group on bunker quality standards, he added.

Last month IBIA Chairman Jens Maul Jorgensen said bunker quality was improving.