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Dutch IGCC pioneers chalk up pain and gain Emergency response is behind schedule in the European public sector A new refining industry in Europe's Asian Corridor Commission proposes milestone energy proposal Replace fuel oil with distillate? Cancelled projects will sustain margins “Marine distillate not fuel oil from 2010” Branson's biofuels megastore You heard it here first: refinery CO2 storage a reality in Norway Buncefield 2: Investigation critical Where now for Swedish Class 1 diesel My slow awakening to climate change The luckiest motorist alive Safety row goes on over Europe's largest LNG terminal New WHO guidelines on city air quality put focus on diesel Would LNG really 'evaporate harmlessly' in an accident? Another lesson in the thermobaric bomb Spare a thought for the oil-rich But will the good times keep on rolling? Carbon storage and the zero emissions refinery Everything just changed E85 and high octane gasolines The problem of small-minded young engineers New Permit Regulations Biodiesel newbuilds and a new green superfuel Spilled wine and our split industry Drilling down into the prospects for IGCC The beginning of the start of the end of oil |  | |||||||||
Download Energy Industry Resumé with work samples Profile: Tim Lloyd Wright MA Here you'll find a brief profile of my work with international energy, transport and associated environmental issues. Energy trends articles You heard it here first: refinery CO2 storage a reality in Norway From the archive... Over-processed fuel leaves oil tankers adrift | ||||||||||
Greenpeace Archive photo | ||||||||||
Legacy of auto oil specs: fuel issues hit marine safety See also: Fuel contamination leaves supertranker adrift The orphan streams of a decade of clean highway fuels legislation are coming home to roost. Terminally cracked intermediate products, the result of conversion units being run ever harder to produce clean on-road fuels, are causing safety issues for the vessels that buy bunker fuel oils. Forced by ever tightening on-road fuels specifications, refiners have channelled highly cracked heavy streams which cannot find a home in commercial fuels into the bunker market. But specialists say that fuel stability is increasingly being compromised and that vessels are at serious risk from engine failure. Separately, 2003 has seen a marked increase in episodes of marine fuel contamination which have exacerbated shipping industry concerns. This publication has learned of two incidents of loaded supertankers being left adrift at sea without power in busy shipping lanes and close to vulnerable coastal environments (see account, page 4). While fuel stability and fuel contamination are not directly linked, the fact that shippers are reporting increasing problems could pave the way for legislative action which would further constrain hard-pressed refining operations. Marine sulphur limits are the subject of a much discussed Marine Fuels Directive, but bunker fuels are also expected by some to be the subject of statutory control when a Marpol shipping treaty is ratified. National authorities, such as the Singapore government, are already acting to tighten controls on bunker quality. “Stoppages at sea due to poor quality fuel remain a distinct risk for ships,” said one fuels testing organisation in a written statement. “It’s amazing that after the Prestige disaster no-one is looking at other potential causes for this kind of thing,” said a marine fuels specialist from another organisation. “It could very easily happen again because of bad fuel.” Although some of those reporting marine fuel problems were willing to comment publicly, individuals and their affiliations are not named here to prevent identification by implication of some who were concerned to remain anonymous. According to the marine fuels specialist, issues concerning the blending of cracked fuels are increasingly common: “we’ve seen a lot of problems in 2003.” Chief engineers aboard vessels and shipping owners confirm the hazard. One shipping owner spoke of seaweed-type formations in the fuel. A chief officer speaks of the horrendous job of removing sludge from separators when things go wrong. “You get asphaltene molecules that stick together and create a kind of shoe polish,” said the marine fuels specialist. “We have engineers getting in touch to say they have shoe polish-like sludge coming out of the separator continuously.” (Back to top) Conversion units The trend of more reports from shippers is related to refinery issues that will be familiar to oil industry chemical engineers. “It’s becoming hard to reach existing specs because of a number of trends,” said a major oil company heavy fuels specialist. “One is that the conversion units are being pushed to the limits, as is the case, for example, with visbreakers cracking heavy molecules. “It means you use up the stability reserve that is normally present in crudes. Terminally cracked fuels are more borderline in terms of stability. That’s exacerbated by another trend. Refineries are using more and more crude oil flexibility, so instead of running two or three crudes that they know very well, they are running other opportunity crudes that come on the market at a reduced price. Instead of the 15 or so crudes that were common when I started, now the crude composition may change with every shift and a refinery may run 100 crudes in one year,” he said. Because of the distillation process, heavy fuel oils are a much closer relation to the crudes run than are lighter products. (Back to top) Supply chain The marine fuel supply chain can be complicated. The refiner’s role is typically to provide a component – a residual oil -- which will be cut to specific grades by bunker operators to suit a variety of requirements from different vessels. That’s not to say that the major companies operating refineries ignore an important market and many major oil companies have a marine fuels blending and sales operation. Small independently owned bunker vessels that take the fuel from depots to often outlying anchorages are also common, and this is a stage that adds a level of complexity. Some say it is complex beyond regulation or quality guarantees, but that view itself is disputed by shipping associations, for example. While it would be almost unthinkable for on-road fuels to be delivered by road tankers with sometimes significant remnants of other industrial fuel oils, or chemical wastes onboard, that’s exactly what shipping and oil industry sources say happens onboard bunker barges. In the worst cases, vessels at sea have in effect become incineration plants for toxic industrial wastes. An overseas insurance industry source based in London illustrated the problem: “There are lots of blending operations downstream of the refinery and those blenders need to make up blends that are specific to particular vessels’ requirements. Abrasive and corrosive elements have been showing up in fuels since the early Eighties. It’s hard for separators and filters to take out Aluminium Silicon Oxides [from process catalysts] and they are like a grinding paste.” The insurance industry executive said that things had improved in 1996 when marine fuels ISO standard 8217 was amended to set a maximum content of cat fines, inorganic acids and other deleterious materials. Even so, a long legacy of inadequate regulation, government apathy, out-dated manual blending and inadequate testing have led to an ongoing story of industry alerts and shipping problems. “We see this when a bunker outfit has used diesel to clean a fuel oil shipment from its tanks, or has left fuel oil in and sold it as diesel at the higher price to a vessel,” said the marine fuels specialist. “If there’s five tonnes on that barge, five tonnes may later have to be removed from the separator. It’s a nightmare for those onboard… a round the clock problem.” (Back to top) On board Both stability and fuel contamination are reportedly causing increasing concern in 2003. A vessel with unstable fuels onboard can experience increased sludge deposits at the separator plant and rapid fouling of inline filters, requiring frequent cleaning – the operational ‘nightmare’ referred to above. Fuel flow restrictions can follow, causing reduced power output capacity and in a few cases engine shutdown through fuel starvation. Shaft breakage can result from the overloading of the separator bowl and a reduction in efficiency may also reduce removal of water and abrasives. “At worst, unstable fuel can alter combustion characteristics, which may lead to asphaltenes impinging on the cylinder liners, removing lubricating oil and thus causing stiction,” said the testing organisation. Since most vessels don’t have redundancy (backup) systems, a loss of power leaves a vessel adrift. The air and sea pollution hazards of fuel contamination and the resulting engine emissions are already a concern for environmental agencies, such as the Directorate General Environment at the European Commission. But, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the safety issues of marine fuel quality are much more pressing.(Back to top) Contamination Oil tankers have suffered loss of power in at least two incidents that took place in Asia and near the Barcelona coast. One, reported by a downstream industry worker, was connected to plastic waste contamination and the other was due to the presence of corrosive elements. Incidences of process catalyst contamination are also common. All can lead to vessels being towed into port after losing power, with a number of recent examples in the US Gulf, Rotterdam, Singapore and elsewhere. There’s also been an increase in the level of more complex external contaminants, such as organic acids not derived from the original crude source. In such cases, fuel pumps and other fuel systems suffer rapid deterioration over a seven to ten day period, causing auxiliary and, in some cases, main propulsion unit fuel system component failure. In incidents where hexadecanoic and octadecanoic acids were found among other traces of chemical wastes, and a similar pattern of engine damage emerged, two vessels were left in serious difficulty. “In once case, a vessel managed to limp into Hawaii after critical failure to its fuel system components made it impossible to continue its voyage across the Pacific,” said the fuels testing organisation. “Another vessel had to request a tow into port.” With a focus on air quality and a recent Marine Fuels Directive, the European Commission has had cause to take a close look at marine fuel quality. An official commented that she was not really surprised to hear of shipping industry concerns about marine fuel. “I’m hearing it from industry stakeholders. The shippers want better quality fuel. They are fed up with using waste product, because that’s what sold to them. But at the same time they want a cheap product,” she said. At the independent tanker owners association, Intertanko, Technical Director, Dragos Rauta, was also more preoccupied with air quality issues and sulphur reduction in fuels. Nevertheless, he was aware of fuel quality problems. “It doesn’t surprise me because it’s the shipper who has to do the testing themselves,” he complained. “There’s a complete lack of government checking. There are pros and cons about why there are no controls on fuel quality – ie that the ships take fuel from barges at sea and that makes it impossible to regulate. But the barges don’t come from outer space. It’s just that the government has to spend some money to do their part of the monitoring.” (Back to top) Supplier view The bunker industry association, IBIA, located in the UK, was created to represent both users, manufacturers and suppliers of bunker fuels. It’s General Secretary, Ian Adams, said that fuel problems aboard ship are rare, and loss of power is extremely rare. According to Mr Adams, a number of misconceptions about bunker fuel often lead to unfounded doubts about quality. “What a lot of people tend to forget is that marine fuel is not a refined product, but a waste product. As such the refining process isn’t geared to affect this product. It’s what is left over and the producers have no control over the content of the fuel,” said Mr Adams. “That’s not to say there haven’t been times when unscrupulous suppliers have dumped other things in the product, but there’s less and less of that today,” he said. “It’s a misconception that ship owners have to test fuel because they’re likely to get off-spec fuel. In fact it’s more a case of the width of the specification leading to the operation of the ship’s plant being slightly different on different fuels.” He said that in the case of polypropylene contamination the industry had worked very quickly to identify the problem, although IBIA also mentioned that the source of the contamination is not today known. Presented with the case of oil tankers losing power to their engines, Mr Adams said such events were very rare and that the position of the vessels would need to be considered. “If it’s in the middle of the Atlantic, it doesn’t present a hazard to other vessels and the crew onboard can work to rectify the problem and restart the engines.” A call to an oil industry environmental body led to a referral to individual oil companies, and although many majors do run a marine fuels business, the ones contacted did not wish to comment. There’s little doubt that in recent years oil companies have been closing testing facilities and reducing or outsourcing the roles that call for a real understanding of complicated heavy fuel issues. That’s consistent with a shrinking, but still large share of the marine market, and a general reduction of downstream lab personnel in the oil majors. While apparently unaware of difficulties with marine fuels, two major oil companies with marine operations did not want to be associated with an article which would mention their name on the same page as the word oil tanker problems, even if they were described as making a positive contribution to the overall situation. At the European Commission’s new post-Erika, post-Prestige Maritime Safety Unit an official was unaware of loss of power issues connected to fuel problems. However, there are credible voices in various parts of the industry that say that the fuels burned aboard the vessels that ply Europe’s sealanes are a mess. (Back to top) New regulations Refiners are likely to have mixed feelings about the new regulations that face the bunker market. Refiners innately seek safety and have often embraced environmental concerns, however constraints on so-called orphan stream blending could impose a heavy penalty on a site’s bottom line. At the current rate of ratification, by the end of next year over 100 countries will be party to a revised Marpol shipping treaty that some say will place a statutory duty on the marine fuels industry to assure that the ISO 8217 marine fuels standard is adhered to. That may put an onus on bunker suppliers to provide a more reliable product. But some in the bunker industry say that Marpol doesn’t go that far. In Singapore, the Maritime and Port Authority has taken matters into its own hands following a spate of contamination incidents. A programme known as Quality Management for Bunker Supply Chain will require all suppliers to have their supply chain management systems certified and audited. It will include key performance indicators on the suppliers. Surprisingly perhaps, forthcoming restrictions on marine sulphur levels in the Marine Fuels Directive may make matters worse. The cost of desulphurisation may encourage blenders to use different varieties of blending stock options, according to the fuel testing organisation: “Already this has led to some problems in maintaining acceptable fuel ignition characteristics,” said the organisation. For the present there remains, at the least, serious doubt about the safety of sea transport and the seaworthiness of marine fuels. “People are really underestimating this,” said the fuel testing specialist. “Seventy per cent of bunkering worldwide involves no testing at all. The oil industry is secretive and there’s a big grey area where chemicals can be mixed and it won’t be discovered. “We have had several cases when things could have gone very wrong – it was a matter of coincidence that we didn’t have a major marine disaster.” (Back to top) On November 19, 2002 delegates at the opening plenary session of the ERTC in Paris were told from the floor that an oil tanker had broken up and sunk in water more than 3 km deep. A year on, the Prestige disaster, a continuing oil spill potentially twice the size of the Exxon Valdez incident, is a painful reminder of how the distribution of refinery products, not just crude, can go wrong. Few Spaniards know that three years earlier, the conditions were in place for a disaster twice as large again on their Mediterranean coastline, all because of the perilous vagaries of bunker fuel quality. In August 1998, an oil company chemical engineer with a background in heavy fuels was at his desk. It was nearing the end of an ordinary day when the phone rang. A 120,000 tonne supertanker with a full load of Arab crude was in trouble. What followed could just as easily happen today. “When they called me they were trying to restart the engines; the vessel had lost power,” remembers the chemical engineer. The independently chartered supertanker had been heading into Barcelona on Spain’s eastern coast and was drifting towards land. Working with only vague information it was at first impossible to provide an explanation. “It was clear that the filters were plugging up very rapidly,” he remembers. A helicopter was employed to bring a fuel sample from the vessel’s tanks, which was then rushed to a lab. But whatever the engineers onboard tried they could not restart the engines. “It was clearly a very unfortunate event which could have resulted in a very serious accident” Piecing together the facts, the chemical engineer weighed up the likelihood of the vessel having bunkered an unstable fuel. But that didn’t answer all the questions. Somehow a plastic compound was forming as the fuel entered the engine systems. “I vaguely remembered that there had been previous warnings about polypropylene,” he says. The 70,000 tonnes of fuel oil which continues to leak from the sunken Prestige has from day one been a sore of public and governmental resentment. It has led to destroyers being deployed to intercept oil tankers and other vessels suspected of being unseaworthy. But the simple fact is that when a captain takes on fuel in almost any region of the world today he’s playing a game of chance, the results of which could be catastrophic. In August 1998, the captain put as many hands in the engine rooms as possible and by changing filters continuously the vessel was able to restart its engines and limp to port. An analysis of the fuel determined that wastes from a chemical plant had been blended with the fuel oil. Opinions differ to this day about the source of the contamination. Rail shipping in Eastern Europe is a possible source of the outbreak, which affected vessels across Europe and North America. “Even now in 2003, there is still no official test method for polypropylene in marine fuels,” says the chemical engineer. “Two or three companies have a test, but none of them has been officially recognised by the American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM), the UK Institute of Petroleum or International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO). And without recognised test methods you can’t establish a minimum content.” In November 2002, a consignment of discounted marine fuel was offered to a trading arm of an oil major in North America. “The traders asked us for advice, and we identified that there was polypropylene. We couldn’t say it was off-spec, so we just said if there’s positive evidence of polypropylene, don’t take it.” | ||||||||||
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