The growing shadow fleet of tankers transporting sanctioned Iranian, Venezuelan and Russian oil is filling up with the cheapest fuel available, hindering industry efforts to use cleaner fuel to cut shipping emissions, according to shipping data and sources. Lloyd's List Intelligence estimates the shadow fleet had grown to around 630 tankers from 530 a year ago, to make up 14.5% of the overall global tanker fleet. Under the so-called IMO 2020 convention adopted by the United Nations' International Maritime Organization (IMO), ships have to switch to low sulphur fuel from the higher sulphur fuel diesel the industry has used for decades. "A lot of shadow vessels have no scrubbers but they buy high sulphur fuel oil when they are in Russia," one industry source said. This means that ships can still get high sulphur fuel at ports servicing those countries, people involved in the fuel shipping trade say.

Source: The Hindu May 29, 2024 14:48 UTC