Confidence level low on U.S. enforcement of IMO 2020

However, for shipowners prone to operating around the regulation by burning cheaper, dirtier fuel on the high seas, it’s extremely unlikely that a fuel supplier would issue — and a vessel operator would accept — a BDN for noncompliant fuel because it would prove the vessel operator was cheating.

“That would be insanity for both the shipowner and the fuel supplier,” said Bryan Wood-Thomas, vice president for environmental policy at the World Shipping Council (WSC), who attended the meeting. “Therefore, simply checking BDNs for enforcement purposes is effectively worthless. We’re of the view that the [Coast Guard’s] inspection protocol, to be meaningful, needs to go beyond the examination of documents.”

For shipowners, the issue is about more than protecting the environment. WSC represents 90% of the global container liner capacity, handling roughly 160 million twenty-foot equivalent unit containers per year.

“If I’m a company that operates ships that are complying with the regulation 24/7 around the world, my fuel expenses are measured in the millions of dollars,” Wood-Thomas said. “In some cases, for our largest members, it’s billions of dollars per year. So if my competitor is not being called out for cheating, it’s a big commercial issue.”

The issue is just as concerning for Chamber of Shipping of America (CSA), which represents U.S.-based companies that own or charter tanker ships and dry bulk vessels engaged in both domestic and international trades.

“We’ve asked multiple times and have gotten the same answer: that the U.S. Coast Guard’s view is that a noncompliant fuel event that occurs outside 200 nautical miles is not within their jurisdiction unless there are false documents on board, or the crew lies about it” to an inspection officer, said CSA President Kathy Metcalf.

Instead of relying on BDNs, Wood-Thomas suggested fuel-testing methods, such as portable spectrometers, to make it easier to analyze fuel samples. “The bottom line is, from our perspective, a meaningful inspection protocol has to have some kind of periodic examination of fuel,” he said.

Mike Rand, a USCG commercial vessel safety specialist, told meeting attendees that the agency has retained the authority to take samples when it feels vessels are not complying with an even stricter 0.1% fuel sulfur limit for ships operating in U.S. waters. “With the 0.5% global limit coming, we may decide to take more samples, but we’re not discussing our sampling policy here.”