More than 20,000 commercial vessels operating in the country are still emitting 600,000 tonnes (600million litres) of dirty diesel in the maritime domain, despite plans by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) to achieve a 40 percent reduction in carbon emissions.

It was revealed by the organisation that by 2023, all vessels must have an established Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII), noting that it would receive a graded rating from A to E, where A would be the best.

Depending on the types of ships visiting ports, it was gathered that the amount of oily substance being dropped could fluctuate between 50 litres and 30,000 litres per service. However, there is no adequate technology to check the level of dirty diesel from the ships coming into the country, leading to pollution.

Ship owners in the country complained that some old vessels abandoned in Europe and other countries were being dumped into Nigeria waters.

The Chairman of Nigerian Ship Owners Forum (NSF), Barr Margaret Orakwusi, who was worried about the trend, said that there was no adequate technology to check the level of dirty diesel ships emitting carbon into the maritime space.

She explained in Lagos that there was no monitoring and documentation of the infected fuel they used, saying that the technology to check them was very expensive.

The chairman added that: “If big shipping companies announced the purchase of new vessels in order to reduce carbonisation, where are these vessels buried? What we always see is that the vessels are brought into the African environment.

“The regulators control our own activities; the diesel that we used to power our vessels is highly regulated in accordance to Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC)’s specifications and that specification is a maximum of 0.5 sulfur content. In Nigeria, our source of diesel is very well known and controlled and our activities are also controlled. She stressed the need to change some of the old vessels that were becoming uneconomical to ship owners, noting that there was need to share information and data,” she said.

Also, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Sea Transport Group, an indigenous ship owning company, Alhaji Aminu Umar, decried the long number of days vessels were made to wait outside bar before entering Nigerian ports, saying it was not economical for shipping business.

Umar said: “This area needs to be looked into because there is a lot of waiting period at our ports here and it is creating so much burning of carbon. Vessels don’t just stay, when they are adrift, the main engines are running, even though they are not moving, their engines has to be kept on and these engines will continue to burn carbon, we have so many vessels waiting outside.

“If you are sailing from Lagos to Port Harcourt and you know your arrival time at a high speed, we all know that our ports don’t work 24hours, even if you arrive early, you would just be stationed outside the port. So, you would have to reduce your speed, this means you would burn less fuel and your carbon emissions reduces immediately. “It means that if our vessel is calling at a port, we are supposed to look at the best time of arrival and be able to adjust our speed, because higher the speed, the higher the consumption of fuel,” he added.

It would be recalled that the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) had rolled out Sea Protection Levy (SPL) for local and foreign ships to curb indiscriminate discharge of ship-generated wastes into the marine environment in the country.

The agency explained that flagged vessels from 100-1000 metric tons would pay N500 per Gross Tonnage (GT) , while those from 1001- 10,000GT would pay N350, those with 10001-100,000 metric tons would pay N300 per GT and those from 100,000 and above metric tons would pay N250 per GT.

It added that: “Foreign flagged vessels are to pay in dollars and the payment schedule is as follows: Those from 100-1000 metric tons will pay $0.1 per GT, those from 1001-10000metric tons will pay $0.15, per GT, those from 10001-100,000metric tons will pay $0.2per GT and those from 100,000metric tons and above will pay $0.3 per GT.” Also, the agency put the rate payable per annum for offshore oil installations by oil at N15million; saying oil wells for exploration would attract N10 million per annum from first day of April every year. (New Telegraph)