Today the North American Emissions Control Area (ECA) comes into force. The area of the North American ECA extends up to 200 nautical miles from coasts of the United States, Canada and the French territories, except that it does not extend into marine areas subject to the sovereignty or jurisdiction of other States. The United States Environmental Protection Agency will be responsible for inspections and monitoring of the compliance of US flag vessels and foreign flagged vessels visiting its ports and waters. These inspections will be designed to ensure that vessels are complying with the rules whether it is by the use of compliant fuel, sea water scrubbing or other means.
The enforcement of the North American ECA’s limit of 1.0% sulphur will extend the areas of the world subject to strict limits controlling the sulphur content of marine fuel and will certainly increase demand for lower sulphur residual fuels.
On the first of January 2015 the ECA sulphur limit will reduce to 0.1%, a level which is in all practicality unachievable using residual fuels. This change will necessitate vessels either switching to marine gasoil or modifying engines to consume LNG or installing post combustion exhaust gas cleaning equipment such as the Oceanox Ecobox.