The share of VLSFO samples discovered to be non-compliant due to their sulfur content material has extra than doubled in 2021, in accordance with testing firm VPS.
About 3% of the samples VPS acquired final yr had been discovered to be non-compliant on sulfur ranges, and this price has risen to about 7% to this point in 2021, Rahul Choudhuri, managing director of VPS in Singapore, stated at Conference Connection‘s Fujairah Bunkering & Fuel Oil Forum 2021 final month.
The majority of the non-compliance is coming from samples from Europe and the Americas, Choudhuri stated.
“We see just about a majority of those fuels being blended to the restrict, which means they’re being blended to 0.47-0.50%,” he stated.
“It does not take a lot to go over the restrict.
“So there’s a problem, I believe, for the trade as to how that is dealt with; do we want tighter rules that fuels can’t be equipped at extra than 0.47%, for instance?”
It had earlier been assumed that sulfur off-specification ranges could be at their highest ranges at first of the IMO 2020 transition whereas remnants of HSFO in supply infrastructure had been being by accident blended into the brand new fuels, earlier than dissipating over time.
