INTERVIEW: Opsealog Sees Potential for 10-12% Bunker Consumption Cuts in Offshore Segment

Arnaud Dianoux is founder and managing director of Opsealog. Image Credit: Opsealog

The offshore segment could be achieving cuts of up to 12% in its fuel consumption and GHG emissions with relatively minor adjustments to its operating practices, according to maritime data firm Opsealog.

The company ran a pilot of its fleet optimisation services with maritime services company Bourbon earlier this year, testing the services on 25 vessels for six months.

Bourbon has decided to roll out the services across its entire fleet as a result, Arnaud Dianoux, founder and managing director of Opsealog, said in an interview with Ship & Bunker.

"This has been a success, because after six months, we have proven that we generated 45-50 mtCO2e reduction per vessel per month; that was a great result," Dianouxsaid.

"How do we do that? We have been collecting data from the vessel, reporting data from software that we deployed remotely and also real-time data coming from sensors.

"Then we have cleaned this data, we have made a baseline from the first months of how this vessel was operating.

"And then we apply and deploy the solution to the shore team and the captain, sending recommendations on how they could optimise fuel usage through engine optimisation, speed changes and so on.  

"Bourbon was really happy with this result, and they decided to move from 25 vessels to the full fleet of 104 vessels."

Change Management for Reduced Fuel Bills

The company bills its services as saving charterers and shipowners around 10-12% on fuel consumption and associated CO2 emissions, depending on the operational profile of each vessel.

Relatively minor changes in how vessels are deployed can deliver these results, Dianoux explained.

"It's a lot of change management on board," he said.

"The captain has responsibility on board, and he can, for example, during the standby period, optimise engine use instead of staying with two or three engines.

"They can go down to one engine. They can go to a buoy, if possible.

"Some of the vessels are equipped with a harbor generator, a much smaller engine, but it's not always used.

"Then we are also working on other behaviour, like transit speed, standby."

Rising Bunker Price Demands Improved Fuel Efficiency

The company sees both rising bunker prices and the desire for improved environmental credentials prompting more demand for its services.

"Globally today for the offshore market, it's definitely the fuel price increase," Dianoux said.

"They are looking for cost optimisation.

"On top of that, Bourbon really wanted to commit to environmental impact reduction through this collaboration with Opsealog.

"They also want to be proactive and anticipate the future, because the amount of data available is growing for each vessel.

"By having a partner like Opsealog managing this data, cleaning this data and transforming this data into action on fuel optimisation, contract performance -- it's key for the future.

"It will also be key to better understanding and anticipating the innovation of tomorrow, on new fuels, new designs, what new vessel they should build in two to three years."

Offshore and Beyond

The offshore segment is particularly well-suited to the optimisation service Opsealog offers, but the company also believes other segments may be able to achieve similar results.

"We have been focusing on the offshore segment, and we will continue to focus on that, but also we are now starting with cable layers," Dianoux said.

"In the world there are 80,000 vessels; why not apply this approach to some other segments?"

The best results can be seen in vessels that include some standby time in their operations, as this time is where a lot of the efficiency improvements can be achieved. But in other areas improvements can be made through digitalisation.

"We can do a lot on vessels which have multiple engines like the offshore ones, and which are not transiting all the time," Dianoux said.

"They're sometimes in standby, sometimes in transit, sometimes in operation.

"For sure this can be applied to oceangoing vessels; there are always things to do.

"Not all, but most of the market is still working on paper logbooks, on spreadsheets, not so able to share data from sensors in real time to shore.

"The more we move forward, the more data will be available.

"And the regulatory pressure will also increase, because the maritime industry needs to decarbonise and move to another era where we are reducing our impact."

More Data to Deliver More Reductions

The company 'definitely' sees increased cuts to bunker consumption and emissions becoming available as technology improves, in particular as more granular data is gathered on ships' operations, Dianoux said.

"For example, we are working on a project in France that allows us to access more than 3,000 data points every second," he said.

"The goal of this R&D project is to generate five to ten additional percentage points of savings on fuel and CO2 thanks to this additional data, because we will know exactly the temperature of each cylinder, the temperature of the sea, we will know the weather in real time.

"We know so many additional factors that we believe it will help us to increase the savings."