VeriFuel urges greater bunker industry cooperation

VeriFuel is calling on the industry to work together more effectively to find solutions that support the smooth transition to new fuels. This cultural shift is needed to mitigate the risks of an increasingly fragmented and complex bunkering marketplace.

This call to action comes, in part, as a result of recent events relating to fuel quality. Investigations into the causes of a series of high-profile marine bunker fuel contamination cases in 2018 have not yet definitively identified a cause: the International Council on Combustion Engines (CIMAC) which found that no single chemical could be blamed for the engine failures caused by off-specification fuel.

“With under a year to go until the 2020 sulphur cap regulation comes into force, the marine fuel supply chain must band together and use this as an opportunity to help dispel increasingly outdated bunker fuel delivery processes and procedures. A lack of transparency does not adequately serve the interests of the ship owners, shipmanagers, operators, or charterers,” Bureau Veritas’ Global Technical Manager for Marine Fuels, Charlotte Røjgaard, said.

Without industry-wide cause-and-effect analysis on a global scale, testing will remain limited to advising owners afterwards what “might” have caused their problem.

Røjgaard explained: “Treating fuel contamination issues as a commercial opportunity, rather than pulling together at this critical time will not only exacerbate fuel quality challenges, it will also continue a culture of mistrust that has plagued the bunker industry for years. We must all contribute to problem-solving.”