CARGILL Ocean Transportation president Jan Dieleman has backed a call by Greek shipowner Evangelos Marinakis for a temporary amnesty to scrap shadow fleet* ships.

“Why don’t we try to find a way for a short period of time that we can at least scrap some of this black and grey fleet?” Dieleman said in an interview.

“I thought that was actually a very pragmatic and interesting approach to an issue that nobody really wants to touch.

“Because the thing is: we have ships that shouldn’t be on the water, but the problem is you can’t get them off the water.”

Last month, Marinakis told a conference that US and European authorities should grant a short-term exemption allowing scrap buyers to remit funds to owners of sanctioned ships without getting in trouble.

He said at least a fifth of the dark fleet had to be scrapped to lessen the threat such ships pose to safety and the environment. Even a 10% reduction would have a “serious impact”, he said.

Dieleman said the prohibition on scrapping shadow fleet ships was in nobody’s interest.

“But the problem is, I don’t know who should make that case… Is that the International Maritime Organization? Who is that?”

SSY head of ship recycling Harry Conrad-Pickles told Lloyd’s List that ignoring the sanctioned fleet problem risked serious environmental consequences the industry was ill-prepared to face.

He said an amnesty was one way forward, but would take years to set up in practice.

Conrad-Pickles said most recycling yards would not touch sanctioned ships without there being some kind of licence or permit to protect themselves.

He estimated just 15-20 sanctioned ships had been scrapped so far, out of the nearly 1,000 trading.

India could legally take a sanctioned vessel if the transaction avoided the US dollar and usual intermediaries such as lawyers, brokers and cash buyers. But this means fewer and slower sales.

“What the market has to understand is that it’s not just a case of paying for a ship and delivering it,” he said. “The current restrictions make routine transactions almost impossible.”

Recyclers would hesitate to take sanctioned ships even if sanctions were relaxed out of fear the rules could be reimposed later, as had happened with Iran in the past.

“This reluctance risks a wave of ageing ships being left to deteriorate or being abandoned, creating a long-term environmental hazard,” Conrad-Pickles said.

For an amnesty to work, authorities would have to accept there was a trade-off between achieving the goal of sanctions and stopping damage to the oceans and human life.

Last month, Frontline chief executive Lars Barstad told an earnings call the idea of a licence from the US to buy sanctioned ships solely for the purpose of scrapping them was being discussed.

“I think that could be a solution, because governments need to take action to avoid environmental damage from those ships,” he said.