Maersk: Bunkering hubs to witness first steps of shipping’s transition to alternative marine fuel

The marine fuels transition will first take place at global bunkering hubs before spreading to other regional ports, forecasts Emma Mazhari, Vice President, Head of Energy Markets, A.P. Moller – Maersk.

Mazhari, also CEO of Maersk Oil Trading, was responding to an enquiry from Manifold Times about the possibility of bunkering volume for alternative marine fuels being moved closer to production sources [e.g. such as methanol bunkering volume to China], affecting bunker sales at current marine refuelling hubs prior to IMO 2030.

“What we’ve learned is that after ordering the vessel you need to have line of sight of the fuel coming which means you need to get the infrastructure such as barges, tank, storage, bunker, licenses, permits, etc in place,” she said on the sidelines of a naming ceremony for dual-fuel methanol container vessel A.P. Moller on Thursday (28 November).

“You need close partnership with the many, many different players in the supply chain and this takes time.

“For the early years you want to concentrate liquidity to some hubs globally where you can get everything set up, like in Singapore in Asia, for example where you can have the fuel being transported in and consolidated for sale as bunkers to many different players in the market.

“Then further down the line we have to development other bunkering locations globally. We’re not going to have the end game from the start. It takes time for this transition.”

Mazhari, meanwhile, highlighted China to be amongst top producers of green methanol for bunkering due to state policies enhancing their production.

“We’ve signed some large offtake agreements on green methanol with production in China. China has got great potential; a lot of land, cheap renewable electricity, and large amounts of bio feedstock,” she shared.

“They also see that’s the way to become more energy independent. There’s a lot of scalability potential.”

Even though Maersk has looked at many projects in other parts of the world, the economics of having a commercially viable production source of alternative bunker fuel are still very much dependant on mass balancing, local government policies and infrastructure supporting specific products.

“Different factors are needed to enable this, you need to have permits, sufficient land, access to the port, or even local government subsidies and regulatory support to scale up production. Basically, these all come together to make for a commercially viable project,” explained Mazhari.

“For biodiesel, it’s very much tied to the feedstock availability.

“For biomethane, you must depend on a gas grid because without this it’s going to be very, very expensive to truck the gas around.”

Maersk Oil Trading, an accredited bunker supplier at the Port of Singapore, took position as top biodiesel supplier at the port in 2023 by recording volumes close to 250,000 metric tonnes.

Related: Maersk names latest methanol dual-fuel vessel after founder in Singapore
Related: Maersk secures bio-methanol bunker fuel supply from China’s LONGi

Photo credit: A.P. Moller – Maersk
Published: 5 December, 2024