IN 1530 – Fuel Consumption Data Collection (1)

The 70th session of IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC 70) adopted mandatory MARPOL Annex VI requirements for ships to record and report their fuel oil consumption, also referred to as the Data Collection System (DCS). In addition to fuel oil consumption, a proxy for ‘transport work’ was also required to be reported.

Members will be aware that IMCA successfully argued at the IMO that the transport work proxy, which has been developed as a carbon intensity indicator (CII) for cargo ships, is not a suitable metric for assessing the carbon intensity of the offshore sector since the measurement of hours underway does not reflect how the offshore sector operates. For this reason, IMCA Members, in collaboration with the Government of the Russian Federation, developed a joint submission to the IMO (MEPC 74/6) proposing a suitable metric for assessing the carbon intensity of the offshore sector.

Due to time constraints, the submission has not yet been considered by the IMO and has been deferred to IMO’s MEPC 76 session in 2021. However, in the interim, it is imperative that IMCA collects fuel consumption data from its Members, in order to ensure that we can effectively engage IMO Member States for a carbon intensity indicator (CII) which works for the offshore sector.