Invasive species at sea
Shippers battle stowaway organisms.
THE maritime industry is closer to solving the age-old problem of preventing aquatic organisms from hitchhiking across the globe in the bellies of its vessels.
Ships are now required to install complex systems that prevent invasive species from finding new homes, spurring a multibillion-dollar industry for companies that can master the technology.
Companies chasing that industry, however, have yet to see their payday amid confusing regulations and industry pushback. An international treaty adopted in 2004 didn’t go into effect until this year, for example, and many ship owners have several more years before they’re
required to install the new systems.
Katy-based Envirocleanse hopes it timed the market right — entering in 2015 — and will avoid the fate of competitors who closed their doors before ship owners began purchasing the systems.
“They started developing systems in 2007, 2008 and 2009,” said Jim Stanka, president of Envirocleanse. “It wasn’t law. That’s the problem. Were the ship owners going to spend this money? No.”
The maritime industry doesn’t doubt that a solution is needed. Ballast tanks are filled and emptied of water to stabilize vessels. But taking in water from one part of the world and dumping it in another has, historically, introduced such species as the zebra mussels and quagga mussels that are disrupting native ecosystems, clogging water intake pipes and hurting
“Just because we’ve been lucky and we haven’t had any known invasive species come from ballast water yet, I don’t think that means we’re safe in the future.” Jamie Steichen, a postdoctoral research associate at Texas A&M University at Galveston
recreational activities in the U.S.
Metal grates typically prevent larger organisms like fish or birds from entering ballast tanks, but they don’t stop larvae, tiny drifting animals or microscopic algae. The latter can cause red tides or harmful algal blooms.
A proliferation of larger, faster ships has only increased the likelihood that such organisms can survive the journey. The expanded Panama Canal also provides for a quicker voyage from Asia to Houston, where Galveston Bay is at an especially high risk, said Jamie Steichen, a postdoctoral research associate at Texas A&M University at Galveston.
Tankers often come into the bay without product, meaning they’re carrying ballast water that must be discharged while the ship is loaded with crude oil, natural gas liquids or refined petroleum products. Steichen said the amount of water discharged locally is equal to that discharged in the Chesapeake and San Francisco bays combined.
“Just because we’ve been lucky and we haven’t had any known invasive species come from ballast water yet, I don’t think that means we’re safe in the future,” said Steichen, who earned her doctorate studying microscopic algae that gets moved around in the ballast tanks of ships in Galveston Bay.
Creating regulations for these ballast-water management systems has been a long, complicated process.
A major milestone occurred in 2004 when the International Maritime Organization, the United Nations’ specialized agency for international shipping, adopted the Ballast Water Management Convention. But it took more than a decade for enough countries to ratify the treaty. As of this March, 66 countries representing 75 percent of world merchant shipping tonnage had signed off.
The treaty took effect this year and is taking a phased approach for when ships have to install the systems. The U.S., however, is not part of that treaty. The Coast Guard published its own rules in 2012.
“It’s a huge complication because shipping is obviously an international business,” said Simon Bennett, director of policy for the International Chamber of Shipping.
For the most part, shipping companies must install systems that comply with both sets of rules if they want to trade in the U.S. and other countries.
The goal of the two regulations is the same — to prevent organisms from being able to thrive in non-native parts of the world — but the testing requirements differ. The International Maritime Organization says that organisms can’t be viable, which is sometimes interpreted as meaning they can’t reproduce. The Coast Guard wants the organisms to be dead, experts explained.
“The differences, on paper, looked small,” said Matt Hughes, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Envirocleanse. “But it had a really big impact on what the manufacturer had to do in order to get approved for both.”
Stanka, the Envirocleanse president, was approached about creating a ballast water management system in 2013. At the time, regulations were rapidly changing and technologies were still largely unproven.
Two years later, he felt more certain that regulations would soon go into effect and the market would materialize. The company has invested $10.5 million in developing its system, Stanka said.
“If you can show that you have the correct technology, the right service mindset and the flexibility to service the industry, it’s a very big market,” said Anthony Teo, technology and LNG business development manager for the maritime business unit of DNV GL, a global qualityassurance and risk-management company.
Envirocleanse is a subsidiary of Charter Brokerage, an import and export brokerage and services company owned by Berkshire Hathaway. Its system treats ballast water while a ship is in transit.
As a vessel moves from one port to the next, the Envirocleanse system will monitor and apply chlorine as needed to kill organisms. The process takes a minimum of 48 hours, so Stanka said the company is targeting very large crude carriers, liquefied natural gas carriers and other vessels that travel for longer periods before unloading cargo.
Other companies’ systems can treat ballast water in a shorter timeframe by applying chlorine or UV light as water is pumped into the tank and also sometimes as it’s discharged from the tank. There are pros and cons to the various approaches, and not all systems are suitable for all ships.
Systems can range from $500,000 to more than $1 million, depending on the type of system and size of vessel.
The patented Envirocleanse system is seeking approval from the U.S. Coast Guard and International Maritime Organization. Stanka expects the company’s costs will be a fourth of competitors who jumped in early, sat idle with zero sales and had to retest systems multiple times to meet the evolving regulations.
“We just haven’t bled money for years and years,” Stanka said.
Among the industry’s biggest hurdles is technology. Regulations were created before devices were proven to treat ballast water.
“It’s a technology-forcing statute,” said Jeanne Grasso, a partner at law firm Blank Rome and co-chair of the firm’s maritime practice group. “The technology was unable to catch up with the requirements. Because unlike shore-side facilities, you have a vessel which moves around the world and operates in many different environments, from warm water to cold water and from freshwater to saltwater.”
That created unease among companies in the shipping industry. They didn’t want to spend money on technology that didn’t work or would need to be replaced in a few years.
“It’s truly hard to exaggerate what a headache this has been for the shipping industry,” said Bennett, with the International Chamber of Shipping.
The World Shipping Council, which represents the liner sector that includes container ships, said its members will comply with the mandatory regulations. They hope to install one system that will meet both the Coast Guard and International Maritime Organization regulations.
More than 70 systems have been approved for the international standards. The Coast Guard has recently approved six, with a handful of others in the pipeline.
The Coast Guard did not approve a single system in January 2016, when it began requiring larger ships to have ballast water management systems installed during their next drydock. The Coast Guard had to extend compliance dates and allow ships to install alternate systems.
Such extensions are harder to get now, but Grasso said the Coast Guard-approved systems are largely unproven in actual operations and a large amount of training, maintenance and experience will be needed to help ensure they operate properly.
“There still is great concern about how well they’re going to work,” Grasso said.
The International Maritime Organization is expected to stick to its current implementation schedule, said Teo with DNV GL.
“They will honor this timeline,” he said. “So by 2024, all ships will be equipped with a ballast water treatment system. There is no other way … there’s been too much delay, and I think IMO has set this date in stone.”
Experts say most of the ships will have to install them by their first International Oil Pollution Prevention Certificate renewal survey after Sept. 8, 2019.
Some other IMO rules are already in effect. Ships without management systems must exchange ballast water in the open ocean where organisms will be less likely to survive. This means they take on water at a departure port, exchange it on the high seas, and then discharge that cleaner water when arriving at the next port.
Those rules are akin to regulations implemented by the Coast Guard, which Grasso said remain in effect until a ship has installed a management system.
Stanka thinks the number of competing system manufacturers will ultimately shrink. Demand is high now because roughly 60,000 ships need retrofitting. But once they’re all equipped, he said, the market will shrink to the couple of thousand new ships that are built each year.
“This thing is going to shake out to only about 10 players when it’s all said and done,” he said. “We are going to be one of those 10.”