At the 70th meeting of its Marine Environment Protection Committee, at the end of October, the IMO agreed amendments to chapter 4 of annex VI of MARPOL which are expected to enter into force on 1 March 2018, under the tacit acceptance procedure. They add a new Regulation 22A imposing an obligation on ships of 5,000 gross tonnage and above to collect consumption data for each type of fuel oil they use, as well as other, additional, specified data including proxies for transport work. The data will be reported to the Flag State who will issue the ship with a certificate of compliance and pass the data on to the IMO. The data will enable IMO to make future decisions about controlling greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping.
Other regulations are amended to cater for the new requirement, including those related to certificates, surveys and port State control.