founded<\/a> the Trident Alliance, an industry lobby group aimed at ensuring a level playing field on the enforcement of the sulphur cap. MSC is not currently a member of the alliance.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
During an IMO sub-committee meeting in London in February, draft guidelines were finalised for the verification of the fuel oil carried for use on board a ship to support the carriage ban.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It appears that the UAE is strictly following the ban on ships not fitted with scrubbers carrying HFO in their fuel tanks.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
However, it is surprising that MSC allowed the owned vessel to continue trading with 700 tons of non-compliant fuel on board after the 1 March deadline.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
An MSC spokesperson told\u00a0The Loadstar<\/em> that it was investigating how the incident took place and was adamant that the vessel had solely been burning compliant fuel since the 1 January regulations came into affect and was now investigating why it was carrying non-compliant fuel.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cMSC is fully committed to implementing the UN IMO 2020 low-Sulphur regime and all vessels requiring compliant fuel were supplied in advance of the implementation date, including\u00a0MSC Joanna<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cMSC has also made \u2013 and is still making \u2013 significant investments in the fleet with the installation of IMO-approved exhaust gas cleaning systems (EGCS).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are closely investigating how it came about that the traditional marine fuel for EGCS installation testing was left on board the\u00a0MSC Joanna<\/em>\u00a0in a sealed tank during its recent UAE port calls, as EGCS installation on this vessel has been delayed several months this year.\u00a0MSC Joanna<\/em>\u00a0has used only compliant low-Sulphur fuel since IMO 2020 came into effect,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
An industry source familiar with the line\u2019s Middle East operations said he was sure \u201cthere must have been some confusion\u201d between the master and the port authority.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cBut why the ship still had 700 tons of heavy fuel on board is something of a mystery,\u201d he added. \u201cI can only assume that the\u00a0MSC Joanna<\/em>\u00a0had been earmarked to be fitted with a scrubber and that the installation had been significantly delayed, leading to the ship being pulled back into service.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
MSC was one of the biggest advocates of scrubber technology and planned to retrofit around half of its 574 ship fleet. However, the original estimates by yards for installation of six-to-eight weeks has proved widely over-optimistic, with the carrier suffering extended idle times \u2013 in the case of its 19,437 teu\u00a0MSC Erica<\/em>, this is now 175 days.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Moreover, since the pro-scrubber carriers with the biggest commitment to the technology, such as MSC and Evergreen, embarked on their strategy, the advantages have virtually disappeared.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Notwithstanding the unbudgeted delays at the yards, when scrubber orders were placed the difference between the price of compliant fuel and HFO stood at $200 a ton at least, meaning that the\u00a0circa<\/em>-$10m investment could be repaid in as little as 18 months for an ULCV trading between Asia and Europe.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
However, due to the collapse of oil prices, the gap has narrowed to around $50 per ton.<\/p>\n
gCaptain<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The 9,784 teu post-panamax\u00a0MSC Joanna\u00a0has been prohibited from operating in UAE waters for one year and its master banned indefinitely and facing legal action from the country\u2019s Federal Transport Authority (FTA) after allegedly failing to comply with an order to debunker 700 tons of heavy fuel oil (HFO) before entering the Dubai port of Jebel …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[1736,3195,3402,2226,916,218,1070],"class_list":["post-6375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marine-world","tag-ban","tag-breaking","tag-busted","tag-carriage","tag-hfo","tag-msc","tag-ship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/6376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}