Annex 6 marks end for residual fuel oil

摘要

Annex 6 of Marpol has been revised and after 2020 it will no longer be viable for any ship to burn residual fuel oil. After that date Marpol will specify fuels of such low sulphur content that fuel oils will be non-compliant. This will require ships to switch to marine gasoil (MGO) in emission control areas (ECAs) and marine diesel oil (MDO) elsewhere. So, unless the oil refiners can find a way of reducing the sulphur content of fuel oil below 0.5% without using a disproportionate amount of energy to do it, heavy fuel oil is on its way out. Although 2020 is the cut-off point, IMO is striving to clean up shipping's environmental impact much sooner than that. From March 2010, ECAs will have a sulphur cap of 1 %. As it is difficult and costly to produce residual fuels with less than 1 % sulphur, ships are likely to have to burn MDO.