Lloyd’s Register (LR) continues to shed light on the evolving marine fuel landscape in its latest FOBAS Fuel Insight report, emphasizing the critical role that fuel quality and regulatory compliance play in the maritime industry.
As fuel is a crucial and substantial expense for ship operators, the swift changes in regulations and fuel compositions necessitate a deeper comprehension of marine fuel quality and global availability.
The introduction of new standards, the rise in bio-fuel blend usage, and the persistent EU and IMO regulations indicate that the marine fuel sector will persist in encountering challenges in the foreseeable future. This series aims to provide valuable insights and analyses to navigate these complexities effectively.
As explained, Lloyd’s Register will take a look back at some of the key trends and areas of concern with marine fuels over 2024. Fuel as always is a vital consideration and expense for any ship operator and with fast changing regulations and fuel formulations there is more attention than ever needed to understand the quality and availability of marine fuels around the world and what to look out for. With the new ISO8217 standard recently released in June
and the increasing use of bio-fuel blends along with EU and IMO regulations to consider, the year ahead will likely continue to provide challenges for the marine fuel industry.
2024 at a glance
2024 has seen some challenges but on the whole the fuel market has been fairly steady from a quality perspective. No major widespread incidents such as seen in recent years but recurring problems such as fuel stability, sulphur and flash point regulation non-compliance and increasingly the introduction of bio-fuels into the market.
The majority of residual fuels bunkered in 2024 were on-spec, particularly when allowing for the 95% confidence range of the specific limit. One of the biggest issues remains off-spec sulphur results. Close to 3% of Residual based VLSFO fuels, based on the recipients sample, had a tested sulphur of between 0.50%m/m and 0.53%m/m; these fuels can be considered still usable, and in compliance with Marpol Annex VI and the 0.50% limit, any onboard samples taken during an inspection have this same tolerance range up to 0.53%m/m applied. However, results in this range still cause some confusion and concern with ship operators, and suppliers should therefore still be aiming to meet the 0.50% limit exactly with the margin of error on the lower side of the limit (i.e. 0.47%m/m or below). This has slightly improved on 2022 but still an issue. However with close to 0.9% of VLSFO fuels having sulphur tested to be >0.53%m/m, this becomes a bigger problem for the vessel and they now have potentially non-compliant fuel and unless they have a EGCS onboard, in which case they would likely not be bunkering VLSFO anyway, there are not many other options except for de-bunkering (exceptions may be given due to safety or environmental reasons but only by relevant authorities eg. Vessel flag Administration).
Inevitably , on receipt of a note of protest on the sulphur content, the supplier will check their own drawn sample which, in accordance to IMO Annex VI Appendix VI guidance, the sulphur content must not exceed 0.50% m/m.
Bio-fuel – FAME
In 2024 they have continued to see an increase in the number of ship operators starting to use biofuels onboard on regular basis or at least trialling to gain necessary experience. There are a number of different products that could be described as biofuel so we have to be careful to be sure of exactly what is being referred to. This is particularly important for any ship operator purchasing fuel where they must be clear what they are actually agreeing to load when offered a bio-fuel.
Selection of established “bio-fuels” against standardised specifications
- FAME – Fatty Acid Methyl Ester (most common product when referring to biodiesel) – quality standards EN 14214 and ASTM D6751
- HVO – Hydrotreated vegetable oils (paraffinic diesel known as renewable or green diesel) quality standard EN 15940
Year ahead
- ISO 8217
The international marine fuel quality standard, ISO 8217:2024 7th edition has just been released replacing the previous 6th edition of 2017. As many will be aware there have been a number of editions of the standard since its first publication in 1982, specifically 1996, 2005, 2010/2012 and 2017, which are all still used and quoted in bunker contracts. The test methods added, parameter limits and general requirements have evolved over time, however the new 2024 version sees considerable changes, with updates focussing on aligning more with the shift to predominantly VLSFOs since 2020 and a greater focus on bio-fuels moving from 7% in the distillate fuel to allowing up to 100% for FAME and in residual fuel oils as well. With this in mind it is important to clearly understand the changes and potential implications for purchasing fuel.
- EU ETS, FuelEU, IMO CII, etc
Along with the new ISO8217 standard there is also the inclusion of the marine industry in the EU ETS (emissions trading system) and along with other IMO, EU and wider industry pressures there will likely be more incentive to start switching to bio-fuels for many vessels and with this a continually growing bio-fuel supply market. This will bring challenges in terms of availability and cost, as well as clearly understanding the relevant regulatory requirements, and will also introduce challenges from a fuel quality point of view. As mentioned previously we have already seen some problems where untested bio oils are sold without proper understanding of the performance on a marine engine and fuel system. This malpractice is likely to continue as the industry looks to meet demand and reduce costs.
- Alternative fuels
here of course is also continuing development and progress on alternative fuels, such as methanol, hydrogen, ammonia. These new fuels introduce a
number of issues to consider but will be important parts of the overall fuel mix going forwards and for the foreseeable future alongside traditional marine
residual and distillate fuels and drop-in fuels.
As informed, to conclude, the general picture of fuel quality in 2024 is one similar to the past few years, at least since the shift to predominantly VLSFO in 2020. The same historical quality concerns such as cat-fines and stability, sulphur and flash point remain, and isolated incidents of chemical contamination are still occurring. Looking forward, the application of the newly established ISO 8217:2024 standard, which includes all current fuel types, is anticipated to be adopted swiftly
