FEATURE: AI Will Not Replace Bunker Traders. Will it?

Artificial Intelligence: Coming to an office near you? Image Credit: Ship & Bunker / AI-generated image

Key Takeaways from This Article

• AI is expected to change bunker trading, but not replace bunker traders.
• Market knowledge remains important, but interpretation matters more than information.
• The trader's role expected to continue shifting toward credit and counterparty management.
• Digitalisation is accelerating due to regulation, not choice.
• More data makes AI more powerful — but also raises the bar for traders.
• Some predict AI will mean personal relationships play a diminishing role in trading decisions; others see it enhancing them.
• AI and digitalization could redefine what it means to be a high-value trader, shifting emphasis from tenure to adaptability and system literacy - regardless of seniority.
• Change likely to be slow, but inevitable.

Artificial Intelligence

If nothing else, 2025 will be remembered as the year artificial intelligence (AI) entered the mainstream, bringing promises of greater efficiency, enhanced capabilities, and new possibilities.

Every company now appears compelled to incorporate AI into their product offering, but after that initial leap GPT tools gave us I think we all see it is becoming more about marketing than anything of substance.

Yet AI also brings the spectre of labour reduction and has already resulted in very real and significant job loss - ask anyone working in computer programming, content production or at a call centre.

So what will it mean for bunker traders?

Knowledge & Credit

Traders have traditionally added value in two key areas: knowledge, and credit.

Before the Internet, market knowledge was the number one reason you went to a trader (or broker). They told you what to bunker, where, who you should be doing business with, and the price you should be paying. What you needed was someone who knew these particulars and could arrange the stem. Bunkers were cheap, credit was a happy add on.

The arrival of the Internet meant a lot of that knowledge became available to everyone. We didn't need the Black Book any more, nor did we need to send bunker indications around by fax.

But that didn't make traders obsolete. Sure, we had more informed buyers, but those who adapted were better traders with access to more data and better tools.

This, along with rising bunker prices and increased legislation, meant the role of the trader has had a growing emphasis on the provision of credit and counterparty management.

I think it will be the same with AI.

It's easy to see how tools such as ChatGPT have made finding information much faster and easier than having to Google things.

But with so much information available to us all, perhaps now more than ever we need humans with experience to help buyers make sense of it and understand the subtleties of what might be lost when that vast quantity of information is summarised.

In a world where information is abundant, the importance shifts from what is being said to who is saying it.

Some will be left behind, but those that adapt will become more effective traders with faster access to more valuable data sets and better tools.

Digitalization

AI tools are only as good as the data they have access to, and the bunker industry is notoriously opaque. Very difficult for AI to leverage data on a piece of paper being hauled up the side of a ship in a bucket.

Large-scale digitalization is starting to happen, and while that's been said many times over the past few decades, a key difference is now it has to happen.

The reality is shipping must account for its emissions and overall climate impact. We can't quantify that unless we accurately measure how much of what fuel / energy is being used.

Mass flow meters (MFMs) with digitalized bunkering solutions are simply the best way to do that. Some might say it's the only way.

As use of such systems increase it will mean a lot of interesting data finally becaomes available in digital form that can be fed into the new AI models we have.

The more we do that, the more valuable those systems become, and the more we will use them.

Of course, exactly how the bunker trader landscape will be changed by AI remains to be seen.

Will we see a shift away from 'I buy from my friends' culture to data-based purchasing decisions?

Will AI make knowledge less valuable and shift the focus of traders further in favour of credit and counterparty management?

Will AI devalue the experience of veteran traders with junior traders taking a more prominent role at firms, lifted by their greater familiarity with technology, ability to adapt, and lower salaries.

Will we simply see fewer traders?

I recently put this question to the Digitalization Panel at the IBIA Annual Convention in Hong Kong.

The Digitalization Panel at the IBIA Annual Convention in Hong Kong. Image Credit: Ship & Bunker

Massive Opportunities for Some

"It's a good question," said Kenneth Dam, Global Head of Bunkering at TFG.

"I don't think that traders will be disappearing. Today the role is more relationship-based and that role might change, their work might change."

One thing AI can never replace is the human element that is so fundamental to this industry.

Will AI eventually be able to predict the logically 'best' route, bunker price and lift location for your voyage? Sure. Will it buy you a beer during IE Week? Never.

But when it comes to making sound commercial decisions, those relationships can also get us into trouble.

"Relationships alone shouldn't decide the right solution for a company. Being a shareholder of a company as well I really want the decision being made based on data and not just relationships," said Dam.

"To be clear, I'm not undermining human relationships at all. What I think is that bunker traders should be experts in the digital systems which can add value to their clients. They get their clients on such systems, and be the one assisting them while still being a trader.

"I think the traders that are now changing their mindset, asking, where do they create value, focusing not only on relationships, they will have massive opportunities."

The importance of the human element in the supply chain was also raised by Julie Nielsen, Global head of Bunker Sales at StormGeo.

After being purchased in 2021 by Alfa Laval and subsequent integration of the BunkerMetric fuel analytics firm in 2022, today StormGeo offers a full voyage and bunkering optimization platform.

Nielsen, then, is very much on the forefront of convincing industry stakeholders that tech can outperform relationships.

"It's a funny argument we hear out there. We don't want to go digital, because it takes away the human touch," she said.

"But how much human trust do you actually have on WhatsApp? I mean, you send a text message and you get a reply. What difference does it make that you do it in a system which can actually create all the data and give you the value data proposition for your future voyages?"

Inevitable Change, Not Replacement

Overall, the feeling from this particular slate of stakeholders was that AI and digitalization is more about uplifting traders than replacing them, a sentiment echoed by Deanna MacDonald, Founding Partner at Aveera Energy and IBIA board member.

"I don't think AI renders traders redundant, necessarily," she said.

"But the trader who uses AI to analyze a complex biofuel blend versus the trader that's working with multiple spreadsheets to analyze it themselves? There's no doubt that using AI will be a competitive advantage.

"So rather than something that replaces traders, I think AI just becomes the next level of power trading."

As for those who believe technological change will be so slow as to not have any meaningful impact on them?

Kenneth Juhls, CEO of AuctionConnect and moderator for panel, reminded that unlike in the past it is legislative change now helping to drive industry digitalization as a whole.

"It's interesting to look at the EUA and the EU ETS. That's not starting with a mindset of, 'hey, let's start to trade that on WhatsApp.' That's not where the starting point is.

"When you do something new, how do you run it? Digitally? Transparent? Auction based? That makes sense. That's effective.

"There might be a secondary market, like everything else, but digital is the direction of travel for the industry.

"250 million tonnes, $200 billion a year being traded over WhatsApp in 10 years time? I don't think so."

Slow

Away from Hong Kong I discussed the potential impact of AI on traders with IBIA Vice Chair and 2050 Marine Energy's Adrian Tolson.

"I think it's a real challenge," he told me.

"One assumes as time passes information from AI will be increasingly perfect and these capabilities will challenge the trader's role of a provider of information for buyers and sellers. 

"One can assume also that forecasting pricing for fuels in multiple ports will be increasingly more sophisticated and so AI's role at forecasting a best purchase decision into the future will also be significant. 

"My feeling is that slowly the trader's role will be dominated by providing credit to buyers and sellers - much as they do now. The only question is, can a more AI empowered and digitally enabled financial world replace the credit expertise of the bunker trader?

"Quite likely - almost certainly."

I am mindful that not only does Tolson have decades of industry experience to draw on, but beginning with Bob Chandran's early belief and adoption of technology at Chemoil, Tolson has been connected with much of the industry's 30+ years of digitalisation efforts.

He, perhaps more than most then, understands how difficult technological change has been for this industry.

"There will be lots of foot dragging - this is after all an industry that is still issuing BDNs in carbon copy triplicate," he reminds me.

"But as time passes all will probably change. Perhaps the safest trader model is the Hybrid one, where a physical supply option is very important.

"Then again, as alternative fuels take over it is not 100% certain what role the traditional fossil fuel supplier takes in this - so far efforts to enter the alternative fuel space have not been very successful. 

"Are we looking over time - 50 years? - at a total remake of the bunker supply and transaction chain? Maybe?"

Relationships

Anyone who recalls predictions that the collapse of OW Bunker would spell the end of traditional bunker trading will recognise that industry crystal-ball gazers have been particularly poor at forecasting the demise of bunker traders. Or for that matter, predicting the uptake of technology within the industry.

As someone who is in constant contact with real companies looking to hire real traders, I asked Vernon Jayanathan, director of Maritime Recruitment Company Ltd, for his take.

"Used correctly, AI will enhance the skill sets of traders and enable them to provide an even better service to their client base, so I see that AI will only strengthen industry relationships, not diminish them," he told me.

"As for tech uplifting the value of junior traders, there has certainly been talk of veteran traders making way to less experienced ones, but I think much of that change can be attributed to mergers and streamlining.

"Experienced traders with a network of transferable clients have always been highly valued.

"This industry is about relationships and I see no signs of that changing."