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Louise Tricoire’s Outlook of Alternative Marine fuels at the LNG Bunkering & Future Fuel Global Summit 2023

Blog Article - Jul 18, 2023

Louise Tricoire, head of TotalEnergies Marine Fuels, recently gave the opening remarks at the 10th Global LNG Bunkering and Future Fuels Summit in Amsterdam. From exploring new LNG hubs, riding the wave of rising biofuel demand to collaboration on e-fuels, Louise spoke of the different marine fuel solutions as she explained how the business entity is developing a suite of alternative fuels to help shipping decarbonize.

Louise Tricoire’s Outlook of Alternative Marine fuels at the LNG Bunkering & Future Fuel Global Summit 2023

Louise began by reflecting how quickly the LNG bunkering market has grown since the Summit’s first inception in 2013 when there were just a handful of LNG-fuelled ships on the seas. Today, there are 900 LNG-fuelled vessels either active or on the order books, which will elicit a nominal demand of 10 million tonnes per annum.

“It’s the most mature, the most liquid, the most affordable way to decarbonize the shipping industry today,” Louise told the audience of some 250 executives. “So that’s why we see a bright future for this marine fuel.”

Not only has the business entity already completed over 100 LNG bunkering operations in Rotterdam and Marseille thanks to two LNG bunkering vessels, namely the Gas Agility and the Gas Vitality; it is also awaiting the arrival of a third in Singapore late this year, she said.

“And we are developing new hubs – the Middle East, the U.S. and Panama. This will help reach our ambition of reaching 10 percent of [the LNG bunkering] market share in the long run.”

In an interview with trade publication Bunkerspot, Louise later said one of the LNG bunkering hubs TotalEnergies is looking into is the major Asia-U.S. container port of Long Beach, Los Angeles. In addition to keen interest from customers, TotalEnergies will leverage on its global LNG portfolio that can supply the molecules, including existing and future flows in North America.

BIOFUELS MARKET EXPANDS RAPIDLY

LNG is “not the only show in town”, Louise continued. “There is another mature solution, in which we are also active and that is biofuels.”

Although Louise was appointed Vice President of TotalEnergies Marine Fuels just 10 months ago, she said she saw dramatic developments in the biofuels sector in such a short time.

“With our team’s commitment to (developing) a reliable biofuels supply chain in the key hubs we operate, with our customers trusting us and partnering with us, we achieved in 2020 four successful trials of biofuels with four different types of vessels and by early 2023, we launched our first commercial biofuel bunker operations with a term contract in Singapore.”

Beyond the shores of Singapore, TotalEnergies Marine Fuels is now preparing to roll out this solution to key hubs in Europe and have conducted two trials in France so far.

Demand for biofuels is growing too – customers have begun to ask for longer-term contracts while biofuel bunkering operations at the port of Singapore have so far this year already equalled volumes for the whole of last year, she said.

COLLABORATION FOR FUTURE FUELS

In the final portion of her speech, Louise addressed the critical need of the industry to work closely together if they wanted to develop future fuels such as hydrogen-based methanol and ammonia on a viable scale. Both supply and demand will be difficult to crystallize without a degree of trust and commitment from shipowners and bunker companies.

Nevertheless, hydrogen-based fuels are seen by many as the best longer-term solution for decarbonizing shipping and even here, there are solid signs that demand is growing.

“There have been announcements on methanol by CMA CGM, by Maersk. What we have in the orderbook is more than 100 vessels, so there is the demand, and we are engaging with our customers to secure the molecules. So, that’s a fact, there’s going to be a need for them,” Louise said, before concluding:

“TotalEnergies Marine Fuels wants to remain at the forefront of this extremely rapidly evolving bunkering market. And we recognise that this will happen through industry collaboration. It’s a unique time today in this industry.”