Ballast water management is probably one of the biggest environmental issues facing the entire shipping industry not just the tanker industry but the entire shipping industry. INTERTANKO is the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners, a non-profit Shipping Association whose aim is to work for the safety at sea and the protection of the marine environment to further the interests of the independent Tanker Owners and to promote the free and competitive trade tanker market.

Two years ago, INTERTANKO developed a five-year strategic plan which included 8 specific issues that were most important to our members and one of them was ballast water. The desired outcome that we wanted to achieve for our members on ballast water was to allow them to comply with the current and future discharged standards whether they will be international or domestic original and to do that we focused on two issues: making sure that our members could install and operate the appropriate adequate equipment on board their ships and making sure that they could comply and would be enforced properly and equitably throughout the world. Two major areas where ballast water is of concern are IMO and the United States regarding the point of view both of the US Coast Guard and of the US Environmental Protection Agency.

An international treaty on ballast water management was adopted at IMO 10 years ago in 2004. For this treaty to enter into force, it required 30 countries representing 35% of the world's gross tonnage. Nowadays, 38 countries have agreed, so the number is met but not the tonnage. Four countries Bahamas, Panama, Singapore and UK, each one by themselves if they were to ratify would bring this treaty into force. We have spoken to Bahamas, Panama and UK which have made it very clear to us that they don't tend to do it anytime soon, however for Singapore we're not sure. So it could happen this year and if it does, the convention will enter into force a year later.

Back in May 2012, INTERTANKO Council recommends a comprehensive document to be sent to IMO to identify the challenges that we have in complying with the treaty. So, we made a submission to IMO in October 2012 to address four major issues as follows: the actual guidelines for the approval of the equipment, the scheduling for the installation of the equipment, the port state control procedures and the survey and certification requirements. I should mention the submission that we made was not just a need to take a submission it was jointly submitted by a whole array of shipping associations as well as Panama, the Marshall Islands and Liberia. A number of flag states were also involved. At that meeting they decided they would not revise the guidelines for approving the equipment which was a disappointment to us. They did come up with some additional guidelines for transparency and things like that but not exactly what we wanted. They did decide to develop an assembly resolution to see what could be done about the scheduling and they did agree with the INTERTANKO submission that the port state control procedures should be no more rigorous than the approval process procedures which is very important. Finally with regard to survey and certification that was a minor administrative thing to make sure we all ships could be surveyed and that was resolved with the circular. The implementation schedule led by Japan at the IMO assembly in November of 2013 they did adopt the resolution, this was very good news we feel not only for INTERTANKO members but for the shipping industry. Basically the implementation of the Convention will be based upon the entry into force date, it's still an unknown, but once we know we have that require tonnage we will know will enter into force one year later and we can start scheduling. Most importantly that resolution declares that all ships are considered existing ships up until that entry into force date and the benefit of that then is that, all ship's up until that date would then have up until the renewal survey after that date to put the equipment on board. So, once the convention is ratified one year later it enters into force and then by the renewal survey after that is when the equipment must be installed under the IMO regime.

For the Port State Control, IMO has agreed to as a trial period initially two to three years following entry into force to get experience in ports they control with ballast water management systems and during that period it was agreed that member states would refrain from the detaining ships or initiating control actions on ships. The US Coastguard said they would not be bound by that so going to the US do we not be any refraining from penalties. There's still some disagreement on the exact procedures but that's being worked out

The big issue right now is BWMS Type Approvals. There was some progress, they did develop some guidelines for transparency but we felt that was not enough and our Council last year said they wanted us to go back to IMO and get the IMO to revise the G8 guidelines, the actual approval Guidelines. Working together with other shipping associations we did make a submission to this last MEPC meeting which met just last week and we want to amend the guidelines to address a number of issues such as the salinity, the temperature, the sediment, flow rates. We wanted to make sure there was a protection for those ship owners that it put equipment on board so whatever grandfather clause included which we thought was very reasonable and thirdly we wanedt to submit this paper to send a signal to the Flag States that maybe we shouldn't rush to ratify this convention too soon as there are still some problems.

Unfortunately the outcome of MEPC66 was disappointing, the IMO member states did not agree with this industry proposal. I would say there was a lot of support, a lot of developing countries, a lot of the open registries supported what we wanted but mostly Northern European countries spoke very loudly against this. US Coast Guard stay quiet by the way, did not say a thing on this. So we were not successful, instead of agreeing with what we wanted, they said they'll do a study to explore what we were saying and that could take two, three, four years we're not sure. So, we decided to make another submission to the next to MEPC which will meet in October and at that meeting we're going to propose a schedule, a time line, a roadmap on what we think ought to be done. Recently, INTERTANKO issued a press release saying we are seriously concerned about the implementation as ballast water treaty now that the IMO did not respond to our concerns at this meeting, we therefore cannot recommend to any flag state to further ratify this treaty. We thought it was important step.

Regarding the US Coast Guard, they firstly issued some regulations back in March of 2012 for the requirements; for ballast water discharge you have to have a plan and a record book. On a positive note the ballast water discharge standard is the same that is in IMO. The compliance schedule that they put out was very similar to what was in the IMO convention. However, now that we have the Assembly resolution which modifies that schedule, the Coast Guard has made it clear they're not going to be using that schedule; they will still be sticking to their schedule. Another positive note though they did come up with something called an Alternative Management System, so an owner that puts on a system that's approved under an IMO Scheme; they will accept that on your ship for five years. They're hoping and they're expecting between now and those five years though, they will have a Coast Guard approved system. An important point to mention is if you do not discharge ballast water into US waters. If your ship is only going there to load discharge cargo, you're not going to have to load up to have a balance water system on board so keep that in mind, as you go through the US.

Finally, also a very positive note, is that the Coast Guard is granting extensions to those people all those ship owners that feel they cannot put a ballast water system on board.

INTERTANKO has done many things to assist members in dealing with these Coast Guard regulations. The first thing we did in working with the Coast Guard is to redevelop the decision tree.

Secondly, a number of members wanted request extensions from the Coast Guard so we developed a model extension request letter. Finally we've also worked with the Class, the Coast Guard to help clarify a number of issues and concerns all members have and they still do and this is just some other things that they pointed out.

Coast Guard have recently granted over a hundred extensions to ships whose dry docking was due in 2014, they have a number of requests for beyond that but right now they're holding off on granting those extensions. The reason they're holding off is because they want to get a Coast Guard approved system as soon as they can so in that way once they have a Coast Guard approved system they can then decide upon what date ships must have on board and stop granting exceptions, but right now they don't have that so they don't know. They chose this January 2016 date and not the first dry docking after that day to try to hold the ship owners as legal as possible to the date and hopefully encouraging ship owners to put pressure on the ballast water manufacturers to go through the Port Coast Guard process and get their system Coast Guard approved. We will see how successful they are. They also indicated it may not need to be done in dry dock this what some the manufacture telling them so the Coast Guard's waiting on that one too, we'll see how that develops. One last item on the Coast Guard is what's going on with their approval process. What we've been told is that there are a few ballast water manufacturers where aggressively pursuing approval through their system, they will not tell us which ones they expect to have a system approved they say by early next year we'll see what happens. They've also indicated we brought to their attention if one is approved and they make that available it creates a monopoly and a problem. They say they understand that problem but they're not going to wait too long before the second one comes or the third one. They've also indicated that they look at the schedule and they'll try come up with something that they call pragmatic on how best to ensure all ships coming to US will have to have a Coast Guard approved system on board.

Finally just turning to the EPA, to a large extent the US EPA requirements are the same as the Coast Guard's which was we were good to see. They all require the ballast water system be approved to comply with the regulations so what AMS and the Coast Guard accept is acceptable to EPA. They do require some monitoring on their ship's for the Ballast Water System with the Coast Guard does not require. The biggest problem is the EPA is not granting extensions they are not granting extensions. So, we discuss this with them, they realize was a problem, so they came with a policy letter with the Coast Guard and said that if the Coast Guard grants an extension to a vessel and if that vessel is in full compliance in all other ways, then they will treat that as non-compliance but they will treat it as a law enforcement priority. Remains to be seen what they do with that with that.

Above article is an edited version of Joseph Angelo's presentation during 2014 GREEN4SEA Forum

More details may be found by viewing his Presentation video