EMEA News
Maersk Working with Other Companies to Catch Sulfur Cheats
Dea Forchhammer, a lobbyist for Maersk Group, has told ShippingWatch that her company is collaborating with other firms to determine ways to help monitor and catch violators of global sulfur regulations, particularly with respect to the 0.5 percent global sulfur cap scheduled to be enacted in 2020 or 2025.
"It's far too dangerous for us to wait until we get to that date before solving this matter," she says.
"We want to solve it now, so that we can just roll into 2020-2025 and have the system up and running."
While the names of the companies were not disclosed, Forchhammer did note that working with NGO green groups, despite them often being critical of shipping, was an important part of the process.
"There are plenty of other things that we don't agree on, but, first of all, that's not my area, so I'm completely clean when I stand with them, and we might as well work together on matters where we have common interests," she said.
Forchhammer was hired by Maersk in August of this year to focus exclusively on emissions regulations.
She told ShippingWatch that policy-makers "Need to understand the business so well that they're able to legislate in a smart manner, so that we ensure that people cannot dodge the regulations."
Of potential sulfur cheats, she remarked, "We don't know if other companies are complying with the regulations, but our experience from the industry says that if there's money involved, there's a tendency for people to tamper with things and cheat."
Maersk is looking at various methods of potential policing, including on-board monitoring systems, and is also working with a Swedish company that is developing a "big data" solution that could potentially determine noncompliance across and entire Atlantic journey.
"In one year there will hopefully be no doubt that everyone is complying with the SECA sulfur regulations," says Forchhammer.
"Hopefully we'll have contributed solid know-how to this process."
Maersk, which has spent about $200 million this year in additional fuel costs to comply with existing sulfur regulations, has repeatedly voiced concerns over weak enforcement of the sulfur cap in force within Emissions Control Areas
