Maritime Authority Cracks Down On Sulfur Emissions

The International Maritime Organization’s Marine Environmental Protection Committee has approved stricter fuel standards to reduce emissions of sulfur oxides from ships, rules that are likely to push up already rising costs for heavy fuel oil and marine diesel oil. If bunker fuel oil becomes a more expensive propulsion source than LNG, ship operators in this sector will maximize the use of boil-off gas – which effectively produces zero SOx emissions – and may move away from wider adoption of onboard reliquefaction technology. Qatar’s massive Qflex and Qmax vessels are the only vessels currently equipped with onboard reliquefaction, and they have HFOburning two-stroke slow speed diesel engines that are not able to run on boil-off gas. Download here