IBIA’s “Best practice guidance for suppliers for assuring the quality of bunkers delivered to ships” was welcomed by the 72nd session of the IMO’s MEPC, where it was agreed that it can be a good basis for the development of IMO guidance.
An IMO Correspondence Group on Fuel oil quality (CG) is developing a draft guidance on best practice for assuring the quality of fuel oil delivered for use onboard ships. The aim is to produce a trio of such guidance documents:
- One for bunker users;
- One for bunker suppliers;
- One for Member States/coastal States.
IBIA’s paper could be base document if the IMO Committee wants to have a best practice guidance for fuel quality. There was agreement that this was desirable and that IBIA’s document should form the basis for the IMO guidance for suppliers.
However, several member states raised concerns about the document, talking about the ISO 4259 in the chapter on testing and interpretation of test results, arguing that only appendix VI of MARPOL Annex VI should be referenced. There is also concerns about ISO standards in the chapter on representative sampling, as many believe that only the IMO Guidelines in Resolution MEPC.182(59) for taking the MARPOL sample should be referenced.
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MEPC 72 agreed to use IBIA’s best practice document as the basis and invited member states to submit their comments to it to MEPC 73.
IBIA’s guidance is an effort to address procedures to safeguard and maintain bunker fuel quality control throughout the entire supply chain; from the production of bunkers all the way through to delivery to ships.
