Grimaldi (Confitarma): the shipowners do not want to elude the new rules on the atmosphere, but they must be put in condition for being able to apply them



Today to Naples, in the course of the session of closing of the Green Shipping svoltosi Forums in the within of the Naples Shipping Week, the Shipping president of the Italian Confederation (Confitarma), Emanuele Grimaldi, it has emphasized that the shipowners must be put in condition of being able to apply the norms for the safeguard of the atmosphere. "The shipowners - he has specified Grimaldi - look with attention to the norms of the IMO, and also to those of the European Union, than shortly they will take effect involving not indifferent obligation and burdens. I do not want to question - he has added - the necessity of these environmental normative important new and I will not never get tired to repeat that the shipping it is a careful field to the environmental safeguard, than he has engaged themselves to giving full performance to the new measures and is ready to invest billions of dollars in order to improve its perfomance. But - it has observed - the fact remains that the normative new, besides to involve important additional costs will more take effect or less all at the same time, demanding participations also on the already existing units".

The president of Confitarma has remembered that the various administrations must still assume a clear position with regard to the implementation of the new limits of the sulfur tenor in fuel for marine use or the possible local exemptions to the international Convention for the control and the management of the ballast water and coming sediments from the ships (Ballast Toilets Management Convention), not still in vigor and not still ratified from Italy. "The auspice - Grimaldi addressing to Koji Sekimizu has said, general secretary of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) - is that the Member States of the IMO are able to give an answer to these problematic ones in the course of 2014, in the interest, not only of the shipowning industry but of all the collectivity. Creed is reasonable by the shipowners to expect that the administrations will correctly know to put into effect and to enforce these new regimes".

With respect to marine fuel with low sulfur tenor, the president of Confitarma has asserted that "the shipowners know that the challenge of the future is in the technologically advanced and efficient ships from the energetic point of view, considering are of the requirement to reduce the costs are of the remarkable investments in order to construct echo-ships that emit gas with low sulfur tenor". "Unfortunately, against the imminent effectiveness of limits still more restrictive of the sulfur tenor in marine fuel - he has found - sussiste a potential risk not availability of the produced one on the market, a total adequate infrastructure lack for I use of the LNG. Without to count the increment of price of low sulphur and the volatility of the cost of the LNG. I consider - Grimaldi - that LNG is not an immediate solution, above all in Italy has said where lacks an adequate offer this fuel".

Grimaldi has remembered the letter opened with which the association of European shipowners ECSA it has asked an just performance ", realistic and harmonized" of European directive 2012/33 on the sulfur content in marine fuel. "Today - it has evidenced - the shipping it is put of forehead to a series of legal and technical uncertainties that the EU commission and the Member States must face with urgency, if they have the intention of help the shipowners to prepare itself upon maturity on January 1°, 2015, protecting the shipowners vituous and arranged in good faith to invest in the adaptation to norms IMO, and encouraging them to make it with transitory application exceptions and very aimed".

The president of Confitarma has specified to wish therefore a moratorium of six months to the adoption of the rules entering for those ships that demonstrate of having tidy within june a 2015 retrofit in basin face to the full adaptation to norm IMO. "Such moratorium - it has explained - would improve in short the implementation of the entering norm, without costs for nobody and with benefits for all". "It is imperative - it has added - to establish legal certainties on the correct observance and execution of the norm, a pragmatic approach to its introduction and meanwhile a parity of conditions between the operators of the shipping and the several modalities of transport".

Also regarding the Mediterranean Sea as area of control of the emissions, according to the president of Confitarma he is necessary, "indeed indispensable, a constructive one I confront between the armament and the administration, conjugating the requirements of the traffics with those of the safeguard of the atmosphere". "We absolutely do not intend - it has emphasized Grimaldi - to elude the application of the new rules for the safeguard of the atmosphere, but we must be put in condition for being able to apply them. On this point I want to be very clear: if the administration imposes uses it of a type of fuel, it must that the produced one is reperibile. In case of proven deficiency, they cannot be debited responsibility to the shipowners. All this without to hold account that the cure could be more harmful of the evil, because it is run the risk to bring back on the road the goods that today uses the freeways of the sea".

At last Grimaldi has restated that the thematic ones of shipping, beginning from those environmental ones, are thematic typically total and that the IMO is the only truly total international organism, in a position to legiferare in matter: "the shipping - it has stated - it can operate thanks to the norms elaborated within the IMO without which there would be dangerous distortions of the market and above all levels of safety and safeguard of the atmosphere many inferiors. The introduction of Conventions IMO has had as consequence the progressive transformation of the ships in more and more sure, echo-compatible and efficient means of transport. The European authorities can contribute meaningfully to the work of the IMO with a work of harmonization of the positions of the several European Countries in breast to it. The Italian presidency of the European Union - it has concluded - will be able to play a positive role to care".