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Report: Kathy Cogo
Forget the slow food movement, we're now seeing a slow shipping movement. In the name of saving fuel, ships around the world are steaming at slower knots.Teresa Hatch from the Australian Shipowners' Association says ships can go through $16,000 of fuel a day."It's happening world wide but that includes ships that call at Australia so certainly some of the lines that call here and make port calls at Townsville, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Fremantle, they would be on a slow steaming schedule. So we're part of that world wide picture, it's happening everywhere."The result of doing this however is that companies have to add another ship to their fleet to fill schedules. Of course it's not practical for all ships to slow down, the dry bulk trade needs to queue at the port to get into a berth.The shipping sector is also facing another pressure, an environmental one.In future it will have to use low sulphur emitting fuels. But that might not be as easy as it seems because the infrastructure to make the fuel isn't available."The International Maritime organisation is the global regulatory regime for shipping, and they have more or less agreed, it just needs a rubber stamp come October, that from 2012 all ships will start burning low sulphur fuels and that will mean a shift from effectively the sludge that we burn now to more like a marine diesel oil with a very low sulphur content", Ms Teresa Hatch said.But they need the refinery industry to build the manufacturing plants to supply the fuel. Ms Hatch says the refinery industry doesn't have enough welders to get the job done.
In this report: Teresa Hatch, maritime operations, Australian Shipowners Association
Forget the slow food movement, we're now seeing a slow shipping movement. In the name of saving fuel, ships around the world are steaming at slower knots.Teresa Hatch from the Australian Shipowners' Association says ships can go through $16,000 of fuel a day."It's happening world wide but that includes ships that call at Australia so certainly some of the lines that call here and make port calls at Townsville, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Fremantle, they would be on a slow steaming schedule. So we're part of that world wide picture, it's happening everywhere."The result of doing this however is that companies have to add another ship to their fleet to fill schedules. Of course it's not practical for all ships to slow down, the dry bulk trade needs to queue at the port to get into a berth.The shipping sector is also facing another pressure, an environmental one.In future it will have to use low sulphur emitting fuels. But that might not be as easy as it seems because the infrastructure to make the fuel isn't available."The International Maritime organisation is the global regulatory regime for shipping, and they have more or less agreed, it just needs a rubber stamp come October, that from 2012 all ships will start burning low sulphur fuels and that will mean a shift from effectively the sludge that we burn now to more like a marine diesel oil with a very low sulphur content", Ms Teresa Hatch said.But they need the refinery industry to build the manufacturing plants to supply the fuel. Ms Hatch says the refinery industry doesn't have enough welders to get the job done.
In this report: Teresa Hatch, maritime operations, Australian Shipowners Association
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