OIL OUTFLOW AND POLLUTION

• Maritime High Consequence Risk Assessment Spill Volumes for major oil transporting shipping company
• Numerous oil outflow and traffic risk assessments considering groundings and collision probabilities for new tanker LNG terminals and routes

ENVIRONMENTAL

Ballast Water: from the early days, basic education on ballast practices, through rules for exchange, and local/national/IMO rule development for treatment. Provided research and publications for USCG and ABS, and participated extensively in working groups at IMO with the US Delegation: prepared studies and regulatory analysis of the economic impacts of proposed ballast water standards for the USCG.

Tanker double hull and probabilistic outflow regulations in MARPOL: Research papers, submissions, and working group participation at IMO. This included work on hydrostatically balanced loading for tankers as an intermediate alternative to double hulling. HEC later wrote the INTERTANKO guide on HBL.

Bunker tank outflow regulations: Research papers, submissions, and working group lead at IMO, including a bunker oil outflow study for the USCG. Note that the work aimed to demonstrate that a risk-based approach could provide environmental protection while allowing flexibility in ship design, rather than imposing a strict double-hull requirement. The work resulted in the probabilistic protective location of bunker tanks as an alternative to double-skin fuel tanks.

Pollution Prevention and Control: EU research project on pollution risks posed by Aframax tankers and the development of pollution-prevention approaches. Developed an integrated methodology for calibrating historical data to predict the risk of accidental oil outflow. The project summary and supporting documents are available here.

EEDI​: evaluation of baselines for tankers, container ships, and LNG carriers, the influence of design parameters on EEDI, and whether the rule formulation would distort ship design in ways that might improve the EEDI but result in lower overall shipping efficiency. Several papers were published with ABS and SNAME and submitted as INF docs via IMarEst. These led to an early recalibration of some baselines and highlighted the difficulty that some ship types/sizes would have in meeting the EEDI. From this work, one could infer how speed/power reductions would be required to meet EEDI. HEC also assisted INTERFERRY in revising the RoRo and Ropax EEDI requirements presented at MEPC 69, 70, and 71, providing technical analysis and member engagement to support data collection.

Environmental Impact: Studied LNG carrier intake and discharge at a proposed terminal to determine the ecological impact on the local river ecosystem.

Emissions: Organised industry forum on marine vessel emission regulations and their potential impact on owners/operators.

RISK

Ship Casualty: Performed peer review of the State of Alaska Aleutian Island Study of the risk of ship casualty. Other risk work may be found here.

STRUCTURES

IMO Goal-Based Standards for ship structures and Class Societies: Work with INTERTANKO and BIMCO as their representative on the External Advisory Group for evaluation of the IACS Common Structural Rules (CSR) harmonisation process.

MISCELLANEOUS

Open Top Containership rules: Work with various technical Subcommittees to develop open-top containership rules (load-line exemptions, stability, bilge dewatering requirements, damage stability, fire detection, fire protection, and hazardous cargo stowage).

Container securing: Developed Container Securing Guide for Class use.

Advisories: Prepared Ballast Water Treatment and Fuel Switching advisories for the ABS classification society.