According to MarineCircle (HyqFocus News) issued on August 31st,2022, this afternoon, Sun Hougang, Executive Chairman of the Bunker Fuel Industry Committee of China Petroleum Circulation Association, released “2021 Global Bunker Rankings By Port”&“2021 Global Bunker Rankings By Supplier” at the Global Bunker Fuel Development Forum of the International Petroleum and Natural Gas Enterprises Conference (IPEC 2022), Zhoushan Port of Zhejiang has climbed to become the fifth-largest bunkering port in the world.
Data shows that in 2021, the supply of bonded bunker fuel in Zhoushan reached 5.52 million metric tons, ranking fifth globally and increasing by one place compared to 2020. The specific rankings are Singapore, Rotterdam Port in the Netherlands, Fujairah Port in the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong& Zhoushan Port in China, Panama Port, Busan Port in South Korea, Antwerp Port of Belgium, Gibraltar Port, and Los Angeles-Port of Long Beach in the United States.
“In 2021 Global Bunker Rankings By supplier”, Chimbusco and Sinopec Bunker as representatives of China's fuel industry, are listed as 2021 Top-10 Bunker Suppliers in the world.
Launching New Anchorage, Expanding “Large Vessels” Bunkering
“A workman must first sharpen his tools if he is to do his work well”, in the past year, in order to address the pain points of Zhoushan's concentrated bunkering in the southern port area, capacity approaching saturation, and the scarcity of large ship bunkering anchors, Zhoushan has officially opened the Qushan temporary anchorage and added two new bunker supply anchors.
Qushan Temporary Anchorage is the intersection of international shipping routes such as Yangshan Port Entrance Channel,Central shipping route, and East Shipping route, with outstanding geographical advantages; The average depth of the anchorage is 26 meters, which can accommodate vessels of 250000 to 300000 tons to anchor with full load. It is an external anchorage and has the cost advantage of exemption from tonnage tax and pilotage, making it the best location for the anchorage.
The use of this anchorage has provided assistance for the expansion of Zhoushan's “large vessels bunkering” campaign. On April 17th , 2022, the oil supply barge "Fujie 17" under Sinopec Zhejiang Zhoushan Petroleum Co.,Ltd. successfully bunkered with 4700 tons of bonded bunker fuel oil for 400000 tons VLOC “ORE NINGBO” under Hong Kong Ming Wah Shipping Company Limited China of China Merchants Energy Shipping Co.,Ltd. with an export value of 3.5 million US dollars. Data shows that from January to July, Zhoushan achieved 335 "large vessels” bunkering operations, with a bunkering volume of 552000 tons.
Digitalization Empowers and Adds "New Momentum "
After the world's first bunker supply intelligent dispatching system was selected as the key achievement project of Zhejiang province’s digital reform, Zhoushan continues to use the "golden key" of digital reform to assist the development of bonded bunker fuel industry.
In the past year, Zhoushan has launched version 2.0 of the “International Marine Fuel Oil Intelligent Supervision Service Application”, which has informationized the entire process of bonded bunker fuel oil anchorages’ supply business, simplified paper declaration for platform unified declaration, and achieved paperless fuel oil supply declaration, effectively reducing customs clearance time by 20 hours; Launched the world's first anchorage oil supply meteorological index. Since the launch of the service, compared with conventional public offshore wind forecasting in Zhoushan, the index is expected to increase the working days of the Mazhi and Xiushandong anchorage grounds with an additional 200 days, as well as that of the Tiaozhoumen and Xizhimen anchorage grounds with an additional 180 days; Accelerate the implementation of paperless business with no orders for direct supply across customs regions, and increase the efficiency of anchorages’ usage by 30%.
Improve Supporting Services and Create the “Zhoushan brand”
As a refinement of the “Zhoushan Price” released last year, in June of this year, Zhejiang Mercantile Exchange in conjunction with Shanghai International Energy Exchange Co., Ltd (INE), a wholly-owned subsidiary of SHFE, officially released China’s Zhoushan LSFO Bonded Bunker Bid Price. The China Zhoushan Bonded Fuel Oil Index system, consisting of “Offer Price”,”Bid Price’‘,”comprehensive warehouse price”, and "available commercial storage capacity", has basically taken shape.
At present, the correlation between the “Zhoushan price” and important indicators such as the actual market transaction price, Mops price(Mean Of Platts Singapore), Platts Bunkerwire Zhoushan Delivery price and Ex-Wharf price remains above 99%, which has gained recognition from all sectors and is gradually showing its influence; The number of quoting enterprises has increased to 5, accounting for 84.2% of the annual bunker fuel supply market in Zhoushan, and the authority of prices has been further enhanced.
In addition to improving the “Zhoushan Price” mechanism, Zhoushan also released the 2022 edition of ‘Zhoushan Bonded Bunker Fuel Oil Bunkering Business Notice to Shipowners’ this year, updating the latest fuel supply anchorage coordinates, navigation law requirements, meteorological information and operating conditions, etc., to provide international shipowners with more convenient fuel supply information in Zhoushan.
In addition, in view of the shortage of professional oil supply barges, Zhoushan issued a new shipping support policy to bring “timely rain” for the development of bonded bunker fuel industry: Zhoushan ship type oil supply vessels and multi-functional maritime service vessels engaged in the supply service of anchorage’s international navigation vessels in Zhoushan were given a one-time reward of 5% and 10% of shipbuilding cost respectively. Each vessel shall not exceed 2 million yuan and 1 million yuan respectively. Thanks to the “careful care” of the bonded bunker fuel industry, this year from January to July, Zhoushan’s ship bunkering volume increased again against the trend.
In the first half of the year, due to the outbreak of Covid-19 in various parts of Asia and the continuous conflict between Russia-Ukraine conflict resulted in the fuel supply shortage and different decreases of bunker fuel’s bunkering volume in major ports around the world. Adding to the HSFO’s pollution incident that broke out in March, the total sales of Singapore's largest bunker fuel bunkering center from January to July this year were 27.038 million tons, a year-on-year decrease of 2.29 million tons, or 7.8%.
China's bonded bunker fuel oil exports declined in the first half of 2022 due to COVID-19, tight cargo and ultra-high oil prices. Data showed that China's bonded bunker fuel oil exports reached 11.84 million tons in the January-July period, down 1.1% year-on-year. However, as China's bonded bunker fuel oil “the main force” of Zhoushan bunker volume is still contrary to the trend of the increase. Data showed that the bonded bunker fuel bunkering volume reached 3.2881million tons in Zhoushan from January to July, an increase of 17.28% year-on-year.
According to the data released by Zhoushan, the planned bunkering volume of Zhoushan Port in the next three to five years will reach 10 million tons. At that time, according to the current ranking, Zhoushan will leap to the second place among the “Global Bunker Rankings By Port” , and be one step closer to the "benchmark" Singapore.
Zhoushan, the development of the bonded bunker fuel industry has a promising future!
Source: MarineCircle (HyqFocus News)
