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Page added on September 5, 2018
Tainted Fuel Disrupts Shipping Industry
Oil may skyrocket to $400 a barrel
Contaminated fuel has damaged and clogged engines on hundreds of oil tankers and shipping vessels around the world, creating costly delays for shippers.
The source of the contamination has not yet been identified, but bad fuel has been traced back to production in the Gulf of Mexico and has shown up in Singapore.
Bad fuel is loaded onto tankers, mixed with other fuels and moved through numerous middlemen before it’s used in a ship’s engine. The complex process and lack of documentation makes tracking the origin of bad fuel difficult, Reuters reports.
Ports in Panama and the Dutch Antilles in the Netherlands have also disseminated contaminated fuel, according to Hellenic Shipping News.
The bad fuel has caused problems in 200-300 ships. The widespread issue has led to leaders in the shipping industry to call for stricter regulation of the marine fuels sector. The marine fuels market is international, though, and no single agency is in charge of regulating the whole sector. Individual national governments usually leave the regulation up to the market within their own boundaries, according to Reuters.
The fuel problem comes as the shipping industry is preparing to transition entire fleets to comply with changing fuel standards set by the United Nation’s International Maritime Organization (IMO). The IMO ruled in 2016 that ocean vessels operating in countries in the United Nations must switch to burning low-sulfur diesel fuel.
The price of oil may skyrocket up to $400 a barrel in the coming years as the standards set in and petroleum suppliers struggle to meet the new demand.
“The economic collapse I predict will occur because the world’s petroleum industry lacks the capacity needed to supply additional low-sulfur fuel to the shipping industry while meeting the requirements of existing customers such as farmers, truckers, railroads, and heavy equipment operators,” Philip Verleger, a senior adviser at the Brattle Group, wrote in a July analysis. “Quite simply, low-sulfur diesel fuel or gasoil is … essential for twenty-first-century economies, governments, and militaries to function.”
16 Comments on "Tainted Fuel Disrupts Shipping Industry"
Outcast_Searcher on Wed, 5th Sep 2018 5:27 pm
Yet, ultra low sulpher diesel has been widely used since 2006 throughout Europe and North America.
The oil markets seem to show no reaction to this supposedly big news.
Looking at oil futures, the prices for oil years out is generally over $10 lower than current prices.
You’d think if this news were AT ALL meaningfully worrying in the real world, that prices for futures years out would be sharply higher.
Another day. Another mindless Cassandra predicting “economic collapse” for no good reason. But it’s good for selling investment advice to doomers, so there’s that.
Outcast_Searcher on Wed, 5th Sep 2018 5:29 pm
Let’s all hide under our beds and pretend that ultra low sulfer diesel isn’t super common, AND that if there is a problem meeting low sulfer standards that NOTHING can be done, like extending the timeframe for compliance or any other adjustment.
A 9 year old could discredit these silly claims in 5 minutes without trying.
Ghung on Wed, 5th Sep 2018 7:44 pm
But the Daily Caller is Tucker Carlson’s baby. He must have vetted it. Yes, crawl under the bed!
deadly on Wed, 5th Sep 2018 9:09 pm
Iranian oil has sulfur in it. Probably those evil Iranians tainting the bunker fuel. You just never know, you know, hey.
I smell sulfur. lol
Was once spelled sulphur, but it is now spelled sulfur.
Two to three hundred ships with damaged engines means you’ll be giving Fairbanks Morse a call.
Jef on Wed, 5th Sep 2018 11:04 pm
Yes Outcast, surely the “market” knows all. It’s like physics there is no going around the “market”. In fact even while we sleep the “market” is figuring out all of the converging constraints facing humanity and will adjust accordingly in order to smooth things out….yea!!!!
Go Speed Racer on Thu, 6th Sep 2018 3:11 am
Let’s put Tetra Ethyl Lead into the
ship’s fuel.
A couple of 55 gallon drums every 4 hours
and that big rig will be
purring like a kitten again.
No need to worry about emissions when
cruising, cause the smoke blows away.
Antius on Thu, 6th Sep 2018 7:30 am
An interesting article discussing alternative (non-oil) propulsion technology for ships.
https://www.raeng.org.uk/publications/reports/future-ship-powering-options
The document provides a summary of considered options. Liquid nitrogen and compressed air are considered, as are battery technologies. Small modular nuclear reactors are also considered. It is noted that all of these options will require substantial additional infrastructure, which explains somewhat why they have not been implemented.
Whilst interesting, the article does suffer from a lack of lateral thinking. Some notable absences from the article are stored heat (i.e. in solid materials or molten salts) and solid biofuels.
Whilst it would be difficult to accommodate the use of solid biofuels on an aeroplane or road vehicle, this is far less true for a ship. It is possible to imagine an arrangement in which wood chips, crop residues, charcoal, coke or some other combustible solid material, are loaded into an insulated silo within a ship. The material could be ignited at one end and fed with air, oxygen and steam, slowly pyrolysing like a cigarette, releasing carbon monoxide and hydrogen that can then be burned in a gas turbine. At the end of the journey, ash and unburned fuel can be removed by flooding the silo with water and sucking out the residue with an airlift pump.
Such an arrangement avoids the complex and labour intensive requirement of having to continually load fuels into a boiler and can make use of cheap unprocessed materials like forestry wastes or crop residues as fuel.
Sissyfuss on Thu, 6th Sep 2018 9:06 am
The problem with Capitalism is that if you make it clean up after itself it doesn’t work very well.
twocats on Thu, 6th Sep 2018 9:51 am
the article quotes Hellenic Shipping New. that article can be read here:
https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/dirty-secrets-tainted-shipping-fuel-sparks-calls-for-tighter-quality-control/
very little hysteria in the original, and certainly no mention of $400/barrel oil. Although a peak oil story about the quality of oil deteriorating, its mainly an engineering story – humans thought they could out-engineer nature – i.e. suffer no consequences for their Dominion. They were wrong.
micahel on Thu, 6th Sep 2018 1:08 pm
I cna’t signup up can someone please help me. I don’t get the email verification email.
Go Speed Racer on Thu, 6th Sep 2018 4:11 pm
Those ship’s boilers are big enough,
It’s just like the titanic boiler rooms.
We can shove in old tires and
sofa cushions, into the fire doors,
then go up topside and
enjoy the wind, waves, and black smoke
trailing off into the distance.
No fuel contamination that way.
Dredd on Fri, 7th Sep 2018 4:44 am
This dirty fuel problem shows how vulnerable wide-spread impacts on sea-trade can be.
But it is nothing like the impact or sea level change will be (The Extinction of Robust Sea Ports – 3).
Outcast_Searcher on Fri, 7th Sep 2018 11:32 pm
Jef, the point is the market is smarter than the opinion of person X. Not that I’d expect you to get that.
Free Speech Message Board on Sun, 9th Sep 2018 7:11 am
Americans fought Commies and Nazis, but now have become Commies and Nazis.
Americans live in a police state, but insist that the USA is the most free country in the world.
Anyone who warns of the dangers of tyranny are called racists and nutjobs and are banned, censored, given IRS audits, arrested, or killed.
The US deserves everything coming to it.
Cloggie on Sun, 9th Sep 2018 7:33 am
“Americans fought Commies and Nazis, but now have become Commies and Nazis.”
When did you ever fight commies? You teamed up with Stalin as of 1933 and only broke the alliance after the war, when Stalin opted for national-bolshevism rather than globalism as the junior partner of the UD.
This is how “Americans fighting commies” actually looks like:
https://goo.gl/images/oUsj1g
People like FSM: high on propaganda, low on historic content.
Boat on Sun, 9th Sep 2018 12:04 pm
Clog
Enemies and allies come and go along with the names of the systems. Right wing power grabbers will always find an opponent.