The Singapore roundtable at SIBCON 2026. Image Credit: Ship & Bunker

Singapore has been the world's number one bunkering port since 1988 and sold a record 56.7 million tonnes last year, but the question put to the closing Singapore roundtable at SIBCON 2026 on Thursday was how long it can stay number one as the marine fuels landscape diversifies.

While that question was not answered directly, delegates were told that ships do not come to Singapore for the fuel price alone but rather for the whole ecosystem: refineries, storage, traders, suppliers, bunker tankers, banks, testing houses, standards, and regulation, and the trust that underpins all of it.

For buyers, this means that not just the price of the bunkers but the total cost of a port call is what makes Singapore attractive: speed, reliability, fuel quality, and a vessel that can bunker and leave with no stoppage, no claims, and no headaches.

"We are not the cheapest place to do business. I think we have to recognize that. But ship owners know the standards that they can expect here," delegates were told.

As the industry moves forward, the question now is how standards and conformance can translate that trust into a genuine competitive advantage for Singapore, "particularly as we move into digital bunkering and alternative fuels".

Challenges the port faces include keeping its efficiency, availability, and reliability under constraints other ports do not have, such as sea space, with room set aside for sea-level rise, and manpower, which means automating and using technology to optimise every call, the panel heard.

And of course what Singapore pioneers as a competitive advantage, others then adopt. This is already starting to be seen with mass flow meters (MFMs) and to a lesser extent the electronic bunker delivery note (EBDN).

The next competitive advantage has to be found, the panel said, and it saw that coming from digitalisation and from the standards and trust around green fuels.

In some areas it was agreed Singapore cannot compete as it produces neither oil nor methanol, so for example it cannot match Shanghai's integrated green methanol chain on price, delegates were told.

But Singapore has readiness across future fuels, being the largest port for biofuel and LNG bunkering despite being first to neither, and a liquid trading market that lets a physical stem be hedged in a way a port closer to the source cannot offer.

The panel was moderated by Caroline Yang, chief executive of Hong Lam Marine and chair of the IBIA Asia regional board, with Choong Sheen Mao, chief operating officer of Equatorial Marine Fuel Management Services, Choy Sauw Kook, director-general, quality and excellence, at Enterprise Singapore, David Foo, deputy chief executive (operations and technology) and chief data officer at the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA), François-Xavier Accard, managing director of CMA CGM International Shipping Company, and Rohit Radhakrishnan, chairman of the marine fuels committee of the Singapore Shipping Association.

Below are other 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.

Fuel Pathways

• Owners do not expect Singapore to offer every future alternative fuel. What they want are the pathways that are mature today, secure and certified: LNG with biomethane, e-methane, and the alcohols, methanol and ethanol.
• Singapore will make methanol available, though perhaps not at the best price.
• The port has licensed three methanol bunker suppliers, is looking at ethanol as the next member of the alcohol family and announced on day one the 5,000 mt ethanol bunkering with Maersk, which was due to take place the following day.
• The port is prepared to take some risk, set the standards, and let the industry try things.
• Shanghai's edge is an integrated chain from methanol production through logistics, regulation, terminal, and bunker vessel to seamless simultaneous operations, which remain a point of attention in Singapore where the lesson is to learn from it, not copy it.
• On LNG, MPA will ask for proposals for up to two floating storage units to add offtake capacity on top of the Singapore LNG terminal and jetty expansion, and has licensed eight LNG bunker suppliers.
• Singapore's ammonia bunkering pilot showed focusing on a bunker vessel alone is not enough: consideration of storage and offtake is also needed.
• Owners want clarity on well-to-wake versus tank-to-wake emissions accounting for alternative fuels, since it decides whether to source closer to production.

Standards and Trust

• Trust covers many aspects: fuel quality, safe operations, reliable data, fewer disputes, and faster transactions.
• Singapore already has the pieces, from mass flow metering and testing to digital records and certification, and the task is to join them into one chain of evidence rather than as separate checks.
• Verification of green fuels is the next frontier, covering origin, production pathway, traceability, and lifecycle carbon intensity.
• To have a competitive advantage Singapore needs trusted evidence, international recognition of the claims, and commercial value for owners and suppliers.
• Trust pays only if what is certified in Singapore is recognised abroad: an owner will pay for bio-LNG bunkered in Singapore if the carbon reduction can be credited in Europe, which today it cannot.
• A memorandum signed with MPA and Singapore LNG at SIBCON is meant to build a bio-LNG supply chain strong enough to take to the EU.
• In phase two of EBDN, MPA has decided to be the guarantor of the data, ingesting it so that it can feed financing, with trials with early adopters over the next couple of months to a year before scaling to the whole industry.
• The aim is to connect meter data, the delivery note, fuel quality, sustainability certification, carbon intensity, payment, and financing in one trusted transaction.
• 5G coverage of the port waters is complete, meter makers will have to adapt to the new standards, and data must reach only those permitted to see it.

What Industry Wants

• Bunkering is a physical delivery business, so industry wants more operational statistics and KPIs, on time in port and on safety, to identify areas where it can improve.
• Regulatory certainty: the delay in adoption of the IMO Net-Zero Framework last October has cost the industry, and companies hear rumours where they would rather have objective information from MPA on what to expect at the next IMO meeting.
• The technical side of the IMO framework rests on science and should see progress at the next Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) session, but the political side has no crystal ball, and industry is asked to support policies once they have been through consultation.