The Yangzi River basin and southeast coastlines have long been one of the most populated areas of China’s chemical industry. A great number of chemical parks in these areas rely mainly on the relatively less expensive waterway transport to buy and sell hazardous chemical products and raw materials.
Yet illegal sewage disposal cases involved with chemical vessels are on the rise accordingly, among which there has been no lack of overseas chemical ships. In 2012, the Jinshan Bureau of Shanghai Maritime Safety Administration (MSA) has dealt with 5 such cases. The latest case saw a Panamanian chemical vessel suspected of violating the Chinese maritime environmental management regulation and discharging into the Yangzi river mouth more than 160 cm3 of tank washing water containing Y pollutants.
To effectively curb the increasing hazardous chemical leakage accidents and safeguard the public’s access to safe drinking water, China Ministry of Transport (MOT) has recently urged all local maritime safety authorities to step up their safety management on hazardous chemical transportation along the Yangzi River. On Dec 28, 2012, the MOT released its plan to further reinforce the supervision over six aspects of hazardous chemical (HC) transport for 2013.
Standardized HC carrying
The MOT proposes to phase out single hull oil tankers and single hull chemical ships. In particular, the National MSA is about to stop issuing the entry-departure visa or other cross harbor permit for single hull oil tankers/chemical ships, passenger ships not meeting the sewage discharge standards and other non-standard vessels passing the Three Gorges area from Jan 1, 2013. Ferry boats with total weight under 600 tones are forbidden to pass the Three Gorges area, however standard vessels, heavy cargo and live cargo ships built after 1 Oct 2003 could be excluded from the ban.
In addition, Chinese maritime authorities will strengthen the notification management of HC ships. A dynamic HC storage and waterway transport monitoring platform is under construction to cover the Yangzi River waters.HC transport safety provisions
From now on, HC transport companies must look to the categories and hazard properties of their HC products while identifying the safe transport conditions. The Notice reminds that, HC transporters are prohibited to load the chemical products if failing to meet the relevant safe transport conditions in aspects such as HC transport approach, packaging, symbols and labels, etc.Market access control
The Notice is planning to establish a HC waterway transport company information bank, with the aim to improve the market access control and create a credit rating system for the concerned companies. Through this info bank, the authority expects to perform more forceful punishment on the violators.Priority monitoring on HC ports and harbors
According to the notice, HC ports and harbors should be consistent with relevant state standards, for example, they should be kept a safe distance from the drinking water sources. The HC ports and harbors should be equipped with sufficient emergency rescue facilities.Professional safety trainings
HC transport workers and port operators handling the loading/unloading of HC products must receive relevant professional safety trainings and obtain the qualified certificate. Main responsible persons, management and operating personnel of concerned HC transport companies should all participate in the safety training.HC emergency rescue
The Notice calls on local authorities of work safety, environmental protection and drinking water management to set up a linkage mechanism so that monitoring in the areas like busy rivers, HC ports as well as drinking water surrounding areas will be more speedy and effective. Affected companies are required to ompile their HC emergency rescue plans in case of any HC transport or loading/unloading accidents.
Industry insiders point out that the steady increase in demand for liquefied chemicals in 2013 will act as a booster for the prosperity of chemical vessel market. Along with this, there will be a new round of increase in the global chemical transport by sea and even by inland waters. One report on the 2013 chemical vessels produced by the DVB from Germany predicts that the global chemical cargo will increase by over 16% in the next four years. As China’s chemical waterway transport is expected to incorporate more stringent control measures, non-Chinese chemical companies is highly recommended to get prepared for the domestic HC transport control.
