Industrial News
IMO review on low-sulphur fuel should be in 2015
UK Government suggests IMO review on low-sulphur fuel should be in 2015 
UK Government yesterday issued a story on the availability of low sulphur fuel, in which Shipping Minister Stephen Hammond suggested that the IMO's planned review should start at the earliest realistic date consistent with adequate information being practically available, which the UK considers to be January 2015.
David Balston, Director of Safety and Environment at the UK Chamber of Shipping made the following comment:
“The UK Chamber welcomes the proposal to bring forward the start date of the IMO’s fuel availability study.
“The sooner it can start the sooner the shipping and refining industries will have the certainty required to plan investment for the future.
“Given the time required for refiners to build new plant to meet the expected demand then ideally the study should have started already, but 2015 is preferable to 2017.
“The UK Chamber is greatly concerned about the impact for shipping operating in the Emission Control Areas (ECAs), for which targets to reduce sulphur are set for 2015.
“We fully support the move to reduce sulphur emissions from ships. But the speed at which shipping operators would be required to meet reduction targets, at huge cost, without sufficient technology in place to support the changes, along with the failure to date for these targets to take account of the overall need to reduce carbon emissions has been causing ship operators great concern for some time.
“Latest research shows that attempts to reach the 2015 target could cause adverse environmental effects with a modal shift from sea to road, result in a loss of 2,000 maritime services jobs and place many more industrial jobs under threat.”
