By 2030, the industry is aiming at 5-10% use of zero- or near-zero carbon fuels. A few years later, we can expect roughly that proportion of vessels requiring salvage to use these fuels. While some will be biofuels or synthetic versions of existing fuels, much of that is also likely to be brand new fuels, with current frontrunners including hydrogen, methanol and ammonia. And their uptake will only grow as the industry scales up infrastructure in a bid to reduce emissions by 70% by 2040.

Along with new fuels will come new vessel types, bunkering infrastructure, onboard technology, regulations and ways of working that prioritise safety and informed operations. This is vital as new fuels involve new risks – ranging from highly explosive hydrogen to corrosive methane and dangerously toxic ammonia – as well as new mitigation measures to address these risks. However, a key consideration absent from these industry conversations is the likely impact of alternative fuels and technology on the operations of the salvage industry.

Mitigating risk and commercial impact

Salvage and wreck removal is already an integral element of maritime safety, ensuring minimised impact on ongoing operations for stakeholders in the region and preventing marine pollution. This requires highly skilled salvage teams coordinating with multiple parties to ensure salvage operations are carried out efficiently and in a time-sensitive manner, and ensuring the safe disposal of any consequent hazardous materials.

However, the addition of new fuels to the mix magnifies many of these elements tenfold. When recovering vessels running on fuels that are highly toxic to health and the environment and often stored under pressure, existing timeframes of a few weeks to a month no longer look acceptable.

The reasons are evident – no one wants a damaged vessel filled with methanol or ammonia sitting on the seabed a minute longer than needed.

The outcomes could be disastrous not only for the vessel or port in question, but also for the marine environment, and for coastal communities through impacts on tourism, fishing and other economic activities. The timelines for alternative fuels like ammonia and methanol are significantly tighter when it comes to impacts of this nature, given that discussions on safe disposal for these fuels in a salvage context are still ongoing.

The route to a faster salvage process is challenging and wil need to be multi-faceted. Better coordination between marine insurers and underwriters, ship operators and ports (if involved), can help facilitate this process, ensuring that salvage experts are brought in as early as possible. The more rapidly salvage operations are commenced, the more likely it is that damage to the vessel and environment is minimised, commercial impact is mitigated, and normal operations in the region can resume.

Considering the costs

The need for an accelerated timeline has important financial implications for our industry. With global legislation on the protection of the marine environment rapidly evolving and major commercial considerations for ports and harbours impacted – not to mention consequences that range from food availability, fishing and tourism to routing and impact on vessel traffic – planning an emergency response should be key to our industry’s goals of safe and sustainable operations.

Moreover, salvage operators usually partner with companies to assist in the safe disposal of fuels and contaminants, provided they do not offer this service themselves. The current salvage market does not have known entities for disposal services working with fuels like hydrogen, ammonia and methanol. This will impact salvage companies who will need to seek safe storage solutions, as well as balance out the costs of doing so in an early market.

With these sorts of considerations to potentially factor in, it becomes essential to consider where else costs can be balanced out in order to ensure sustainable conditions for salvage and the maritime industry.

Creating collaborative responses

One of the strategies we might follow at Marine Masters, depending on the conditions of the salvage operation in question, would be to rely on locally sourced contractors to form a team. This saves the cost of importing equipment from other regions, and can speed up operations, making them more timely and consequently reducing the commercial impact for stakeholders.

This also aligns with our own Equipment, Social, Governance (ESG) strategy that prioritises a mitigated environmental impact, and helps build strong and sustainable relationships with personnel in the region. This fostering of shared knowledge and skills in regions where we undertake operations also ensures we act in line with the global maritime industry’s goals of a Just Transition.

The salvage process around alternative fuels will not only need to be faster; to minimise marine pollution it will need to be broader too. Oil products are well understood and relatively easy to confine in many circumstances, whereas for an LNG plume or even the dissolution of large quantities of ammonia, a far wider area could be affected. This could possibly demand coordination between multiple regional port or maritime authorities – and is potentially an argument for developing combined emergency response resources to tackle these issues.

Establishing a base of knowledge

The emergence of new fuels is currently unlikely to evolve the broad actions required during a salvage or wreck removal operation: the situation is assessed for whether the vessel is still afloat/sinking/on fire and what the conditions of pollution are involved, speaking with the vessel’s captain, deploying a salvage expert to the location to gather information, all while simultaneously mobilising equipment, marine craft and personnel. Safety measures are discussed and evolved during operations to ensure risk is mitigated wherever possible.

Our assessment of ship design information available will change when it comes to vessels operating on new fuels – as retrofitted older vessels may have new tanks, hybrid fuel options and amended operating procedures, while experimental newbuilds with unique designs may have unknown variables. For example, methanol can be stored at ambient conditions in zinc-coated conventional tanks, while LNG and ammonia can both be stored in stainless steel tanks. LNG can be kept onboard in either low-pressure or high-pressure tanks; two completely different designs each with very different characteristics. A consequence of this variety is that the tanks anticipated for alternative fuels may be distinct and individual, introducing a variety of new elements to consider for safe operations during salvage and wreck removal.

Under existing SOLAS convention requirements, vessels must fulfil an alternative design pathway, with designs judged individually based on risk assessment, until more prescriptive rules are established. Only then can a global norm for vessel design start to take shape. Until then, the proliferation of new vessel designs that accommodate alternative fuels will remain a challenge for salvors, who rely on detailed knowledge of the vessel structure and equipment arrangements to plan safe removal.

Advancing towards new horizons

While the salvage industry is familiarising itself with the properties of these new fuels and ship designs, the information available is still limited on our learning on the impact of new tank designs and vessel designs is just beginning. What is clear is that alternative fuels will demand new levels of expertise from salvage teams. In fact, it may be that knowledge needs to be specialised, so that salvors need to be trained in the range of designs and fuel properties relating to each alternative. That would require a new approach to training and standard-setting in salvage.

Our strategies for gathering information may require the inclusion of new stakeholders, and our operations, personnel, crafts and skills would need to evolve as a consequence. These are potential challenges for salvage that are already on the horizon.

With the need for a faster and more widely coordinated response, and the demand for new skills and knowledge that upend decades of established industry expertise, it is clear that alternative fuels in shipping will stretch the capabilities of salvors along with all other maritime stakeholders. But stretching to meet these new demands can also strengthen the industry. Greater knowledge sharing, more ready collaboration and an increased focus on skills and standards will benefit not just the world of salvage, but the entire maritime community.