Capt. Qaisar Qayyum's paper on debunkering is available here. Image Credit: Capt. Qaisar Qayyum

• Debunkering starts amid uncertainty: quality investigations, ownership questions, changed charters, says former Vitol Bunkers operations chief Capt. Qaisar Qayyum
• Disputes are lost when operations cannot be reconstructed, not when they were performed wrongly
• Proper sampling builds confidence between parties during the operation, not just evidence after it
• Full paper free to download from Ship & Bunker by clicking here

To much of the commercial side of the bunker market, debunkering looks like a delivery run backwards.

Capt. Qaisar Qayyum,a Master Mariner and Independent Maritime & Bunkering Adviser who spent some two decades managing bunker operations at Fujairah, latterly as General Manager, Bunkering Operations (UAE) for Vitol Bunkers, has spent much of his career correcting that assumption.

"Debunkering is not merely the reverse of bunkering," he writes in a new paper published by Ship & Bunker.

"It is one of the few operations within the marine fuel industry that simultaneously tests almost every element of operational capability."

The difference lies in how each operation begins.

A routine delivery starts with everyone's interests broadly aligned: the supplier wants to complete the stem, and the vessel needs the fuel for its onward voyage.

Debunkering starts with relationships already under strain, with fuel quality under investigation, machinery repairs altering the vessel's requirements, chartering changes making the original stem unnecessary, or even ownership of the fuel itself requiring clarification.

The operation therefore "begins not with the movement of fuel but with the reduction of uncertainty," Qayyum writes.

That starting position changes the status of every record made along the way, because a debunkering is conducted in circumstances where any log, sample, or email may later have to support a technical investigation or a claim.

"Many disputes were not caused because an operation had been performed incorrectly," he writes.

"Rather, they arose because the operation could no longer be reconstructed with sufficient clarity to satisfy all parties involved."

Memory fades over the weeks and months a dispute takes to develop, he notes, while tank measurements, transfer logs, sampling records, survey reports, and contemporaneous communications together form an evidential chain that allows events to be understood in their proper sequence.

Sampling gets similar treatment: beyond the laboratory analysis, samples that are obtained, witnessed, sealed, and documented correctly build confidence between the parties during the operation, while deficiencies complicate commercial discussions even when the fuel itself ultimately proves satisfactory.

The independent surveyor's greatest contribution, on the same logic, "was not the production of reports but the confidence those reports inspired."

Qayyum's broader argument is that fuel removal is the industry's most revealing stress test, exposing weaknesses that stay hidden during routine deliveries.

Every debunkering, he writes, was an opportunity to observe "how an organisation actually functioned when certainty gave way to uncertainty."

The full paper, Debunkering: Why One of the Marine Fuel Industry's Most Demanding Operations Reveals the True Value of Operational Judgement, can be downloaded here.