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Serious shortcomings in the IMO’s Ballast Water Convention are compounding shipowners’ natural reluctance to invest in new technology which offers them a big round zero in terms of return on capital employed. But experts are warning that uncertainty relating even to type-approved system performance – two such systems have been withdrawn from the market in the last few weeks – is making a ship operator’s choice of strategy even more challenging.

For repair yards, the issues could become commercially critical over the next five years. Estimates vary, but sources believe that around 1,000 ballast water treatment systems have been purchased and installed so far, with 1-2,000 ordered but not yet fitted. Depending on whose statistics you choose to believe, that could leave around another 55,000 installations of various shapes and sizes to be made over the next five years or so. For repair facilities aligned with proven system manufacturers offering technology that works, there could be a bonanza ahead.

However, a key concern relates to filtration technology: there is only a handful of filter manufacturers supplying this market and their filtration designs are widely deployed as key components in many of the systems currently available. But withdrawal from the market of the two systems so far is understood to relate to non-performing filter technology.

Sources highlight a series of other issues which cloud the ballast water picture, even for those ship operators who choose to adopt a proactive approach. Many owners and their representative bodies are hoping that these uncertainties will deter some flag states from signing the Convention which has now reached the required number of signatories but still needs more ships to meet the tonnage requirement. Amongst the issues which are causing sleepless nights are:

• Type approval: scientists believe the guidelines, as drafted, are wholly inadequate. The process requires testing in sea water of two salinity levels; tests do not need to be carried out in fresh water where many systems fail to function properly because fresh water does not contain chlorine, a key active substance in some systems. And manufacturers can choose to submit only successful results to the IMO’s type approval committee, ie. results where the absolute numerical standard of organisms contained in ballast water were met, rather than tests in which they were not. In theory, therefore, a manufacturer seeking type approval could conduct 500 tests and then pick the 200 that worked, discarding the others.

• The issue is further complicated by the fact that the Environmental Protection Agency in the US has indicated that ballast water treatment systems will require manufacturers to have systems type-approved in the US, although it is understood that there is a five-year window for this process to take place. Therefore, again in theory, a ship operator who had installed IMO type-approved ballast water treatment systems in 2014, for example, might find the systems failing to meet US type approval requirements in 2018. His ships, as a result, might no longer be eligible to trade to the US unless the systems were taken off and replaced with US-approved installations.

• Then there is the question of compliance. Currently, sources point out that there are no guidelines for the testing of compliance by port state control officers. During loading and discharge operations, time is critical and port state surveyors, owing to other priorities, may only be able to take ballast water samples when a ballast tank has been mostly emptied. Since a number of micro-organisms tend to sink to the bottom of tanks during transit, (others float and others remain in suspension), the maximum required to meet the Convention requirements could easily be exceeded.

• There is also a challenge relating to the sampling process itself. Micro-organisms taken through a drip sample at a manifold nozzle into a suitable flask are likely to die, according to experts. But the sample requires the measuring of viable organisms capable of reproducing. The sample itself could therefore prove worthless.

A recent study in New Zealand found that at least half of the invasive species identified in the country had not arrived in ships’ ballast water. And since ships have been carrying ballast water across our oceans for many decades, shutting stable doors after horses have bolted also springs to mind.