Mark Waddington.
Director and Senior Consultant, Channoil
Mark is a senior downstream energy consultant with 30 years’ commercial experience, covering refining, trading, supply and commercial sales, including 21 years at BP plc and 6 years at World Fuel Services.
- Since 2017, Mark has been working for Channoil and in 2018 became an associate director, focussing on trading, commercial and wholesale markets in EMEA
- He produced market studies and investment analysis of bunker fuel terminals in Nigeria, Malta, and Egypt
- He led a market study of the East African LPG market for a potential investment in Mombasa, Kenya
Produced a UK market entry study for a European renewable fuel producer - In June 2019 – he was the opening speaker at International Bunker Conference in Gibraltar: “Global fuel supply – the far-reaching impact of the IMO 2020 sulphur cap”
Your questions answered.
Should regulatory bodies increase pressure on industries to speed up the viability of green fuels?
Ideally, they should. From experience of mandates on the transport fuels sector to introduce biofuels, the regulators need to put a structure in place that requires industries to participate and creates a level playing field for the market participants. For the maritime sector, this is currently either going to be through IMO 2050 or the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS). There is a chance that the EU agenda will be accelerated through a co-operation between the EU and the Biden regime in the USA.
Who regulates the regulators?
I didn’t answer this during the session, but my personal view is that the regulators are regulated by government, and that ultimately, government is regulated by the voter. So, you could say that we regulate the regulators.
How quickly do you expect to see changes in bunker fuel buying requirements?
For many of the true low carbon options such as green hydrogen or ammonia, it will take 10-15 years before they materialise. For the transition options such as biofuels and LNG, things are happening already. But LNG requires new infrastructure and biofuels are expensive. So it will take time, and regulatory bodies may need to help speed up the process.
