As the debate over future fuel choices rages on naval architect and marine engineering firm Foreship believes owners will turn back to high sulphur heavy fuel oil by 2030 with 30% of owners opting for scrubbers.

Availability of low sulphur fuel was a major concern for many attending the Greener Shipping Summit 2017 - refiners are confident they will be able to meet the demand, but the changeover cannot occur overnight delegates were told.

The IMO has warned there will be no exceptions to the 1 January 2020 0.5% global sulphur cap for marine fuel oils.

These are challenging times for shipping with owners and managers having to juggle difficult markets, regulatory change and technology developments, all at the same time as their day-to-day business.

Under the weight of coping with a tsunami of regulations, more dry cargo ship owners are turning to Intercargo in record numbers for support.

Energy pricing agency S&P Global Platts has proposed to start publishing new daily assessments for marine fuels with a maximum sulphur content of 0.5% from January 2019.

The looming IMO regulation to restrict bunker fuel sulphur content to a maximum of 0.5% from 2020 may result in higher ocean transportation costs and profound changes in ship design, industry players have warned.

Japan’s NYK has contracted Wartsila to install scrubbers on two new 56,000-dwt handymax bulk carriers, making them the first vessels in NYK’s fleet to be installed with exhaust gas cleaning systems.

Classification society ABS has updated an advisory on the latest available exhaust gas abatement technologies to help the shipping industry prepare itself for the upcoming IMO global fuel sulphur content cap of 0.5% in 2020.

The Danish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will deploy a new sniffer technology to be mounted on helicopters to monitor sulphur compliance from ships at sea.