Intercargo exhorts to adopt a pragmatic approach in the application of the new norms on the sulfur tenor in the bunker



Intercargo, the international association that represents active shipowners in the field of the marine cargo transport dries, exhorts to relatively assume a "pragmatic approach" to the application of the new regulations that previews a limit of the sulfur tenor pairs of 0.50% in mass for fuel to marine use, norms that will take effect on January 1°, 2020(on 28 October 2016).

In the course of the reunions of the committees technical and directive of the association, that they are in development yesterday and today to Singapore, Intercargo has examined aspects legacies to these normative innovations as supplying of this fuel type, above all to light of the lack of the availability of this type of bunker in some ports. According to Intercargo, "during an initial transient period a reasonable and balanced application of the regulations would be therefore welcome".

In particular, Intercargo has manifested worry for the obstacles of technical and operating character who the shipowners find themselves to face in order to adapt itself to the norms that will take effect at the beginning of 2020 in consideration of the difficulty of consistent fuel supplying. "In 2020 - it has emphasized the association - a drastic change is attended and, if a transition without difficulty is not assured, the impact will be important: there will be an impact on the commercial exchanges, on the economic increase and on the societies it is of those the nations developed that of developing of all the world".

Between the other topics faced from the committees of the Intercargo, that of the lefts been necessary to the ships to rinfusiere. In its annual report Bulk Carrier Casualty Report, that it covers period 2008-2017, the secretariat of the association remembers that in the 2017 the tragic incidents to portarinfuse the Stellar Daisy and Emerald Star have happened, the first with a iron mineral cargo who is sunk on 31 March in the southern Atlantic and the second one with a nickel mineral cargo that is sunk 13th October in the Philippine Sea. The relationship evidences that the two incidents, in which they have died 32 marine (the highest loss than human lives from 2011), have raised doubts on structural integrity of the ships and on the conditions of safety of cargos to high density transported from the two to rinfusiere. Intercargo confides therefore that the investigations in course on the lefts supply answers to these doubts and allow to characterize measures in order to avoid tragic future events.