The board of Essar Shipping Ltd approved an enabling resolution on Monday on sale of older vessels of the company, a move mainly aimed at dealing with a couple of global shipping regulations that will have an impact on older ships.

Cap on sulphur content

Beginning January 1, 2020, ships have to use fuel oil on board with a sulphur content of not more than 0.5 per cent m/m (mass/mass), a steep cut from the current cap of 3.5 per cent m/m.

Ships can meet the requirement by using low-sulphur compliant fuel oil or continue to use high sulphur fuel oil by fitting exhaust gas cleaning systems or scrubbers.

The International Convention for the Control and Management of Ships’ Ballast Water and Sediments (BWM Convention) requires ships to manage their ballast water to remove, render harmless, or avoid the uptake or discharge of aquatic organisms and pathogens within ballast water and sediments. The Ballast Water Management Convention entered into force on September 8, 2017.

Fleet renovation

“The enabling resolution will help us start working on renovation of the fleet — getting out of older tonnage and gradually look at inducting slightly younger tonnage,” Essar Shipping Executive Director and CEO Ranjit Singh told BusinessLine .

“We have one capesize ship which is around 23 years old. We are currently working on that one. Down the line, with new regulations coming in, these will have an impact on older tonnage. We will have to start looking at all these things,” Singh added.

Essar Shipping runs a fleet of 14 ships, mostly bulk carriers, comprising one capesize (170,000 tonnes), six mini capes (105,000 tonnes each), one panamax (75,000 tonnes), two supramaxes (55,000 tonnes each), two handymaxes (12,000 tonnes each) and two very large crude carriers or oil super tankers.

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