ECA Extended to Eleven Chinese Ports
Image Courtesy: Qinhuangdao PortThe requirement to use fuel oil with a sulphur content not exceeding 0.5% mm when berthing has been extended to key ports in China from January 1, 2017, the London P&I Club informed.
The requirement has been extended to the ports of Tianjin, Qinhuangdao, Tangshan, Huanghua, Guangzhou and Zhuhai.
Together with Shenzhen port, which was added to the Emission Control Areas (ECAs) as of October 1, 2016, and the ports of Shanghai, Ningbo–Zhoushan, Suzhou and Nantong, this brings the number of key ports in ECAs to eleven.
On December 15, 2015, the Ministry of Transport of China issued regulations related to the three ECAs in the country’s territorial waters. The ECAs were established in the coastal and inland waters near the Pearl River Delta (excluding the waters of Hong Kong and Macao), Yangtze River Delta and Bohai Bay region.
The implementation of low sulfur fuel is divided into stages in order to gradually tighten the regulations by putting a 0.5 percent sulfur content cap on bunkers used within the zones.
The next stage in the ECA would be to use low sulphur fuel throughout the whole berthing period. This requirement is scheduled to come into force from January 1, 2018.
