Company: ASC
Filing Date: 2025-03-07
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0001558370-25-002500
Chunk: 81

Company: Ardmore Shipping Corp
Filing Date: 2025-03-07
Form: 20-F
Item: Item 4
Chunk 81
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 to create additional procedures for monitoring cybersecurity, which could require additional expenses and/or capital expenditures. The impact of future regulations is hard to predict at this time.

Pollution Control and Liability Requirements

The IMO has negotiated international conventions that impose liability for pollution in international waters and the territorial waters of the signatories to such conventions. For example, the IMO adopted an International Convention for the Control and Management of Ships’ Ballast Water and Sediments (the “ BWM Convention”) in 2004. The BWM Convention entered into force on September 8, 2017. The BWM Convention requires ships to manage their ballast water to remove, render harmless or avoid the uptake or discharge of new or invasive aquatic organisms and pathogens within ballast water and sediments. The BWM Convention’s implementing regulations call for a phased introduction of mandatory ballast water exchange requirements, to be replaced in time with mandatory concentration limits, and require all ships to carry a ballast water record book and an international ballast water management certificate.

On December 4, 2013, the IMO Assembly passed a resolution revising the application dates of the BWM Convention so that the dates are triggered by the entry into force date and not the dates originally in the BWM Convention. This, in effect, makes all vessels delivered before the entry into force date “existing vessels” and allows for the installation of ballast water management systems on such vessels at the first International Oil Pollution Prevention (“ IOPP”) renewal survey following entry into force of the convention.

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The MEPC maintains guidelines for approval of ballast water management systems (G8. At MEPC 72, amendments were adopted to extend the date existing vessels are subject to certain ballast water standards. Ships over 400 gross tons generally must comply with a “ D-1 standard,” requiring the exchange of ballast water only in open seas and away from coastal waters. The “ D-2 standard” specifies the maximum amount of viable organisms allowed to be discharged, and compliance dates vary depending on the IOPP renewal dates. The standards have been in force since 2019, and for most ships, compliance with the D-2 standard involved installing on-board systems to treat ballast water and eliminate unwanted organisms. Ballast water management systems, which include systems that make use of chemical, biocides, organisms or biological mechanisms, or which alter the chemical or physical characteristics of the ballast water, must be approved in accordance with IMO Guidelines (Regulation D-3).

Since September