UK: IMarEST Ballast Water Technology Conference to Highlight Challenges and Technical Solutions

Ballast water is currently high on the marine agenda. Next week, between 27 February and 2 March the IMO’s Marine Environmental Protection Committee 63 (MEPC 63) meeting will be held in London. There is every expectation that the 2004 Ballast Water Management Convention will be fully ratified, opening the floodgates to a market that the authors of a paper in an Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology (IMarEST) publication put at some 70,000 vessels at a cost of $70 billion in total.

Even before that happens, this week the two-day IMarEST Ballast Water Technology Conference is being staged in London tomorrow and Friday (23-24 February), an event being attended by speakers and delegates from 17 countries. The focus of the conference is to highlight the challenges facing shipowners and managers, and the technical solutions available. Global experts and marine engineers most qualified to advise shipping will be offering both practical and critical guidance as to the most appropriate systems to adopt to ensure their regulatory compliance; and shipowners will also be airing their views.

The current issue of IMarEST’s Journal of Marine Engineering and Technology (JMET) carries two key Ballast Water papers. One looks in depth at the size of the Ballast Water market, how much implementing the Ballast Water Convention may cost and how many vessels will be involved; and the second focuses on the logistics. The result of the research will be presented to the IMO meeting.

“The smart money is on the Ballast Water Convention achieving the threshold which will trigger it coming into force 12 months afterwards,” write JMET Co-Editors, Dr Richard Bucknall and Dr Alistair Greig in their introduction to the current issue. “The threshold is set at a minimum of 30 countries that must constitute not less than 35% of the gross tonnage of the world’s merchant shipping. As of 31st January 2012 the tally stood at 33 countries, but only about 26.5% of the gross tonnage. The implications of the convention are now starting to bite and the two papers in the current issue of JMET eloquently outline some of the challenges of making the convention work. As with many of these regulations and conventions, the devil is in the detail.”

[mappress]

Shipbuilding Tribune Staff, February 24, 2012