World News
VPS: Industry is Underestimating Risk from Decline in Distillate Fuel Quality
The industry is underestimating the risk from the increasingly poorer quality assessments of distillate fuels, says Rahul Choudhuri, Managing Director – Asia, ME & Africa, VPS.
"If you look at the last two years, distillate fuel quality is changing," he told delegates last week who had gathered at SIBCON.
"Issues like high pour point fuels, low flash point fuels, low viscosity fuels are pretty much common place, and this is a clear trend that we can't avoid."
At present, distillate fuels make up the minority proportion of marine fuel use by volume, but their use is expected to increase sharply with the introduction of the 0.50 percent global sulfur cap, a move that could come as early as 2020.
Another change highlighted by Choudhuri was that fuel quality issues are now no longer limited to local markets, but have instead become a global problem.
"If I look at our last year's issue of bunker alerts, we did that in 19 countries and were able to document 6 types of fuel-focused quality defaults. This year that has been from 16 countries with ten types of fuel focused quality defaults," he said.
"What this tells us is that managing fuel quality needs have a global focus. Fuel quality performance gets more critical on a global stage, and I think more advanced data analysis will become more important going ahead, not only in terms of benchmarking yourselves, but benchmarking yourselves vis-a-vis competitors."
Key Bunker Prices More
| VLSFO | MGO | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $/mt | +/- | $/mt | +/- | |
| Singapore | 629.00 | 2.00 | 738.00 | 1.00 |
| Rotterdam | 572.50 | 6.50 | 740.00 | 13.50 |
| Houston | 593.50 | 6.00 | 753.50 | 11.00 |
| Fujairah | 626.50 | 4.50 | 885.00 | 3.50 |
| Global 20 Ports Average | 646.00 | 0.50 | 825.50 | 1.50 |
| Global 4 Ports Average | 604.00 | 2.50 | 784.00 | 4.50 |
| Global Average Bunker Price | 700.00 | 3.50 | 883.00 | 3.00 |
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