Cleaner shipping rules to hit fuel oil market

LONDON, July 24 – New regulations that will force the shipping industry to switch to cleaner fuel could snuff out nearly a quarter of European demand for fuel oil by 2015.

The package of measures will add to the woes of the dirtiest and least profitable oil product: sludgy, bottom of the barrel fuel oil left behind from refining more profitable motor fuels.

Under legislation voted in by the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization (IMO), new sulphur content specifications for ships operating in the Baltic, the North Sea and the English Channel will be revised down from 1.5 percent to 1 percent next July.

Demand for shipping fuel, known as bunker fuel, in these key transport channels amounts to nearly a quarter of the European fuel oil market.

Reuters