SIBCON 2026 Keynote Panel: Geopolitics, Trade Disruptions and IMO Developments. Image Credit: Ship & Bunker

The disruption that began with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz at the end of February has settled into a new normality of high prices and patchy supply. Even when the current crisis is resolved,  Shipping should expect there will soon be another one, delegates gathered for the keynote panel at SIBCON 2026 in Singapore heard on Wednesday.

Rising conflict has also reframed the debate on alternative-fuel options, panelists said, which is now as much an energy security question as a climate one.

The current crisis also has a potential dividend in that the money being made in the current market could be reinvested in alternative fuels, with two panelists naming ammonia as the fuel they would back if forced to choose one.

As for the next shock, the supplier's answer could be a digital one, including standardised bunker operations in every port, according to one panelist.

The panel was moderated by Sarah Cottle, executive vice president and general manager of Dow Jones Energy, with David Osborn, director of marine environment at the IMO, Frederik Guttormsen, president APAC at Stolt-Nielsen, Kenneth Dam, executive director and global head of bunkering at TFG Marine, and Tsutomu Yokoyama, executive officer, energy division, at NYK Line.

Below are some of the key takeaways from the session that was held under the Chatham House rule, so what follows is reported without attributing any point to an individual speaker.

Living With Disruption

• The market went from extremely subdued to extremely volatile when the crisis began, and the volatility, high prices, and lack of supply in many areas are now the normal operating environment.
• Having been through IMO 2020, COVID, and the Russia-Ukraine war, history says there will most likely be another one, so the lesson is to stay prepared.
• Fuel redundancy gives more options, including LNG and biofuels, rather than reliance on heavy fuel oil.
• At the start of the latest crisis about 15% of global liquid chemical flows stopped moving overnight, squeezing feedstock for refiners and petrochemical producers across Asia Pacific.
• Bunker procurement has switched from being price-led to supply-led and even with much higher prices the first question being asked today is not how much, but whether the fuel is there.

Who Pays

• Shipowners bear the first-order costs of operating in a disrupted region: liability for damage to the ship and injury to crew, higher insurance premiums, crew bonuses, and the cost of diversions.
• Fuel suppliers should not carry the cost of safety or disruption, because they neither create nor manage the risk; their role is to supply fuel in whatever market exists.

Coordinated Response

• Fragmented responses to disruption have never been sufficient and dialogue among IMO member states remains as important as ever.
• Beyond freedom of navigation and restoring traffic separation schemes, a coordinated response to the current crisis has to focus on seafarers. Many remain in the Gulf, and the conflict has caused "far too many fatalities".
• Rising global tensions have brought more cyber attacks on ships including the spoofing of messages between shore offices and vessels, which has already led to dangerous operating environments.
• Energy security has become the top priority, ahead of decarbonisation, and Singapore's push to widen its alternative-fuel options is now as much a security question as a climate one.

Digitalisation

• Leadership in bunkering means driving the market in the right direction, not being the biggest by volume, and the right direction is digitalisation.
• Bunkering should be digital, with no traditional tank dipping enabling faster bunkering operations.
• Early departure after a digitalised bunkering can save three to five hours per call, which at today's freight rates has a large value.
• Owners, suppliers, and banks have lost a lot of money to fraud over the years, and part of the resistance to digitalisation is that it removes exactly that element of the business.
• Singapore's quality and quantity dispute rates, far below the global market's, show it, and digitalisation should help consolidate a market in which some suppliers and traders exist on exactly those practices.
• "The biggest problem in the bunker industry is the industry itself", according so one panalist, who added that if you described a bunker operation to an AI today it would not believe it.

Human Element

• The engineering and technology of the fuel transition risk getting ahead of the people.
• Training and the ability to handle multiple fuels in different circumstances have to keep pace.

Regulation

• Shipping should decide whether it wants to be a passenger or a leader in the decarbonisation happening across every transport sector, having historically led.
• Without a clear price for future fuels shipowners cannot make a capital bet over the 25-year life of a ship.
• Fragmented regulation creates opportunities as well as a stranglehold: the Netherlands' implementation of RED III moved bunker volumes out to other ports and made the value chain more expensive without achieving its goal.
• The IMO's 176 member states negotiate and agree the rules, not the IMO secretariat.
• Almost every member state says it wants a global framework rather than regional measures.
• Asked whether adoption of the IMO's GFI regulation would push owners to invest in alternative fuels, the panel's answer was yes, with the caveat that it depends on exactly what member states finally agree.

Fuel Transition

• What owners want is clarity: with EU ETS, FuelEU Maritime, and national directives all in play, compliance rather than cost is the biggest headache.
• Owners cannot simply wait for regulation but have to be ready for the day the transition accelerates.
• Alternative fuels are not always more expensive with one panelist noting since the Hormuz disruption methanol was cheaper than heavy fuel oil.
• Asked to pick one fuel, two panellists said ammonia for the long term, while one said LNG for the short to medium term.
• Recent volatility has created opportunities and profits for all market participants, and the hope is that money made during the crisis is reinvested in the industry for the fuel transition.