Distillate Products News

The path to decarbonization is defined by partnership and fueled by government funding. This month we examine the players, partnerships, and evolution of Hydrogen Hubs in the Gulf of Mexico.The Green Shipping Challenge, organized by the United States and Norway at COP 27 held in late 2022, brought about dozens of announcements on maritime decarbonization. Among these was a joint statement from the Blue Sky Maritime Coalition (BSMC) – a consortium of North American shipowners and…

(This is excerpted from Maritime Reporter & Engineering News' January 2020 "The Path to Zero" column.)Are the world’s ships’ engines ready for IMO compliant very low sulfur fuel? That’s a wide open question as ship owners step to the end of the preparatory gang-plank on January 1, 2020 when 0.5% very low sulfur distillate fuels (VLSF) have to replace residual heavy fuel oil (HFO) containing 3.5% sulfur.You might think that given the length of time to prepare – since 2008 – shipping experts and engineers would have a clearer picture about new fuels and marine engines and operability.

The U.S. energy industry braced for a major test to refineries and power plants as an intense winter storm roared up the Atlantic Coast, bringing heavy snowfall and high winds to a region already beset with several days of extreme cold. The storm is the product of a rapid and rare sharp drop in barometric pressure known as bombogenesis, or bomb cyclone. Heavy snow pounded the East Coast along a front stretching from Maine as far south as North Carolina early on Thursday, knocking out power, icing over roadways and closing hundreds of schools. Prices for heating oil <HO-NYH> <HO-DIFF-NYH> and natural gas in the U.S. Northeast hit their highest levels in years on the back of near-record heating demand. Benchmark U.S. heating oil futures are near the highest in almost three years.

Traders are cutting plans to use tankers to store oil at sea as the price incentive recedes, the global head of oil at mining and commodities group Glencore's said on Tuesday. In January, the price of spot oil was around 50 percent lower than a peak hit in June, enabling traders to potentially make money by storing crude for delivery months down the line, when prices were expected to recover. Tanker industry sources estimated in late January that the volume of oil booked for floating storage had reached up to 50 million barrels. The economics of storage can only work if oil prices for delivery in the future are at a large enough premium to those in the spot market - a market structure known in the industry as contango. A backwardation is when the opposite occurs.

Traders Mercuria, Trafigura and SOCAR cut gasoline desks; new refining capacity slashes traditional profitability. U.S. refining boom weighs on global light products. Trading houses are shrinking their gasoline desks in response to a slump in activity, particularly in Europe, where overseas competition and rising global supplies have limited opportunities to make money. New and highly competitive refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast, in Asia and the Middle East have increased global supplies of the motor fuel. That has made the most active and lucrative trading routes, such as the transatlantic arbitrage between Europe and the U.S. East Coast, less and less profitable for traders. "After a decent beginning to the year, the arbitrage to the U.S.

With six months until the January 1, 2015 deadline, owners and operators urged to plan ahead to manage their ECA fuel needs. With exactly six months to go until the 2015 ECA regulations take effect on January 1 next year, marine fuel trading company Dynamic Oil Trading has called on ship owners and operators to prepare now to ensure that they can still meet their supply requirements for compliant products within Emission Control Areas (ECAs), and to work collaboratively with their fuel suppliers in order to minimize the impact on their operations and profitability. From January 1, 2015, all vessels sailing in the designated ECA zones in the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, the waters off the U.S. and Canadian coastline and the U.S.

NLI Solutions and Wilhelmsen Technical Solutions have received Approval in Principle from DNV on a jointly developed LNG Fuel Tank solution based on the NLI LNG tank design. Oslo, 4th of June 2013. Wilhelmsen Technical Solutions (WTS) and offshore oil and gas engineering specialist NLI Solutions (NLI) have received Approval in Principal (AiP) from the Norwegian class society Det Norske Veritas (DNV) on their jointly-developed LNG fuel tank design. The two companies have worked…