Shipping Industry Unprepared for IMO2020, say Commodity Traders

by Ship & Bunker News Team
Monday April 2, 2018

The Shipping industry is not prepared for the upcoming IMO2020 rule that from January 1, 2020 will see the global sulfur cap on marine fuel fall to 0.50%, some of the world's global commodity giants have said.

"Do I think that the market is perfectly prepared for this change? Absolutely not," FT reported Trafigura's Ben Luckock, co-head of group market risk, as saying during the recent FT Commodities Global Summit in Lausanne.

Speaking at the same event, FT quoted Franco Magnani, chief executive of Eni Trading and Shipping, as saying there was still a lot of uncertainly surrounding the position of the shipping industry on IMO2020, with clarity over the number of vessels opting for scrubbers as their compliance route a particular case in point.

Offering an answer to this was Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst at SEB, who pointed to a report by his firm indicating 2,000 of an 18,000 strong group of crude, dry cargo, and box ships would have scrubbers by 2020.

IMO, in its original estimate as part of the official fuel availability study, had previously predicted that world-wide there would be 3,800 scrubber equipped vessels.

Lourdes Rodriguez, executive director of trading at Repsol, meanwhile, said during the first two years of the new sulfur cap compliant fuels would be the dominant choice for ships. "Time is not enough to have a different solution," she reasoned.

Ship & Bunker News Team
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