SIBCON 2020 Highlights The Significant Impetus For The Green Shipping Movement
Blog Article - October 15, 2020
The current and future commercial landscape, growth segments, and strategies to operate in the post-COVID environment, were key talking points at #SIBCON2020.
This year’s event, 6 to 8 October, brought together the international bunkering and shipping community in to one virtual conference and exhibition. Congratulations to MPA Singapore, Maritime Singapore and InformaConnect for making SIBCON 2020 such a success.
Our Managing Director of Total Marine Fuels Global Solutions, Jérôme Leprince-Ringuet, led a presentation to industry which explained about the development of LNG as a marine fuel. While LNG-fuelled capable ships make up 22% of newbuildings on order in gross tonnage terms across key shipping segments (data sourced from shipbrokerage Clarksons), Jérôme indicated there was more room for the LNG-fuelled fleet to grow.
One positive sign is the growth in the tanker segment, 20% of carriers of above 80,000 dwt are being built to run on LNG.
“This coming from a shipping asset class involved in global trade, is a vote of confidence in the readiness of the LNG bunkering infrastructure worldwide,” he said.
LNG bunkering infrastructure investments have also picked up.
“Six bunker tankers under construction are for Asia — two in Singapore, one each in Malaysia, China, Korea and Japan,” he noted.
With these new additions on the horizon, the global LNG bunkering fleet looks set to more than double to 33 strong.
Jesper Rosenkrans, Global Sales and Business Development Director, took part in a panel discussion on managing the strategic and operational impact to industry post COVID-19. He explained that the business has set its sights on the strong growth of China’s bunkering market, which has held up amid the pandemic-driven supply chain disruption.
“Chinese bunker volumes have increased by 10%–15% this year in the Ningbo-Zhoushan area despite the pandemic, and this trend of a strong and growing bunker market in the region is likely to stay.”
Both Jérôme and Jesper talked of a significant impetus for the green shipping movement stemming from the pandemic. “Interest in liquefied natural gas as a cleaner burning marine fuel is picking up significantly.”
You can follow more of the insight from Jérôme and Jesper in recent editions of TradeWinds, Lloyds List, Bloomberg and SIBCON’s media partner - Manifold Times.