Refuelling by barge

This new initiative also makes ExxonMobil Marine Fuels & Lubricants the first supplier to make MGO available via dedicated barge to vessels operating in Le Havre.

Shipowners thus benefit from competitive prices and refuelling services when calling at HAROPA – Port of Le Havre. Moreover, it should contribute to lowering the total amount of emissions usually generated by the whole port activities at the same time.

As one of the partner ports of the HAROPA port system, Le Havre is located in the Sulphur Emission Control Area (SECA) zone and has committed itself to help vessel’s comply with the new regulations.

This new barge fits in nicely with a project HAROPA Ports is undertaking called Study for Alternative Fuels and Experiment in the Seine Channel Area (SAFE-SECA), which aims to facilitate low sulphur fuel bunkering operations and to initiate a low-sulphur fuels bunkering supply chain in the Seine valley and bay.

The maximum sulphur rate content was 1% up to the end of 2014, but this was of course lowered from 1 January 2015 to 0.1%. The new regulations are a major issue of concern to the shipping sector which aims to find complementary or other solutions to traditional bunkers.

A HAROPA- Le Havre spokesperson told GreenPort: “With around 6,000 vessels accommodated each year, HAROPA had to be in a position to offer bunkering solutions of low-sulphur fuels fulfilling this requirement. Its thus initiated a cooperative approach together with institutional stakeholders in order to study low-sulphur fuels likely to be used by sea and river transport via the Seine artery as well as the bunkering techniques likely to be used.”

ExxonMobil now supplies MGO at more than 40 ports worldwide. Its recent expansion of MGO delivery follows the launch of ExxonMobil Premium HDME 50, a new category of marine fuel that contains a low sulphur content specially formulated by ExxonMobil to meet the 2015 Emission Control Area (ECA) sulphur limit requirements.