30% COURSE SUBSIDY UNDER THE MARITIME CLUSTER FUND AVAILABLE Apply for a 30% subsidy on registration fees under the MCF Fund. Call us at Tel: + 65 6338 0064 or email us at info@ cconnection. org to get more details on eligibility terms and conditions. COURSE DIRECTOR John Vautrain, Senior Vice President & Director, Purvin & Gertz Inc, Singapore KEY ISSUES TO BE COVERED . Overview of refining, production & shipping to locations . Key quality parameters of bunker fuel and petroleum products . Drivers for demand growth of bunker fuel . Non- bunker uses of fuel oil . Crude oil alternatives . Refineries & bunker fuel . Bunker fuel blending . IMO sulphur regulations and their impact on bunker fuel markets . Cutter stocks . Bunker fuel market structure CERTIFICATE OF ATTENDANCE All Participants who successfully complete the full 1 ½ - day course will be given a Certificate of Attendance

ISO 8217 World Bunkering Autumn 2010 45 What next? World Bunkering talks to Wanda Fabriek about ISO8217 2010 - and beyond I t is a month after the publication of the 4th edition of ISO8217 standard, which was released just five years after the publication of the 3rd edition. Time for the ISO committee to sit back and take a deep breath? Far from it. " We have already been active and planned a meeting in November to discuss how we should move forward towards the next revision," says committee chair Wanda Fabriek. " There were some technical comments received during the DIS ballot that could not be addressed at that time and which now need to be resolved. In addition, we have to be swift to decide what we're going to work on so that future editions of the specification for marine fuels will make perfect sense around 2018/ 2020. We won't be covering the huge range of issues for the next edition that we did this time, but the work will go deeper into specific areas." For the moment, though, the industry is beginning to take stock of ISO8217: 2010. A number of significant changes were made to the standard, including: . Hydrogen sulphide limits introduced . Acid number limits included . Ash limits reduced . Vanadium limits reduced . Aluminium and silicon limits reduced . CCAI ( Calculated Carbon Aromaticity Index) added . There is no provision for the inclusion of biofuels in the standard Biofuels and blends The biggest issues to resolve were not necessarily those where major changes were introduced. " The most important issue for us to resolve was the inclusion of bio- derived fuels. We debated it at every meeting over two years of work," says Fabriek. Ultimately, the committee concluded that the scope of the standard could not be changed, meaning that fuels with FAME content are still excluded from the ISO standard. " I am confident that we reached the right conclusion. Maersk only recently announced its study to look at whether biofuel is suitable for use in marine engines and how it needs to be handled by the fuel system on board. It is clear that [ the use of biofuel] is a serious technical issue, which is related to the lack of sufficient experience at this point in time. This study indicates that companies are concerned about the inclusion of biofuels in the fuel standard at a time when the marine industry is not yet ready for this." On the other hand, Fabriek says, the situation is changing fast, and it may soon be necessary to revisit this question. " We cannot hang about, and it will probably take a few years working on the biofuel issue in terms of research before we can include it in the standard. The committee needs to answer certain questions, including how the purifiers will work, whether the reduction of cat fines will be affected, and so on." In particular, she says, the committee is concerned to protect the DMX grade, a special grade for emergency purposes. It is absolutely essential that the grade must be usable without the risk of it stalling engines or causing damage. " Perhaps ultimately the answer will be to insert a single biofuel grade into the standard, but the research and the experiences gained through the industry studies will guide the committee members and allow us to decide how to best proceed with this issue," she says. H ² S The inclusion of an H ² S limit was another major point of discussion, and caused considerable comment from across the industry. The new limit is 2mg/ kg in the liquid phase, which can translate to con-siderably higher levels in the vapour phase. This led to considerable controversy in the review phase, with suggestions that the concentra-tion should be measured in the vapour phase after delivery, and that it should be set at zero. These issues were discussed in great depth by the committee. " Regrettably, the H ² S limit was and perhaps still is misunderstood by many. I believe that many stakeholders didn't understand what we were trying to do in setting a limit. The committee adopted the industry's acceptable guiding limit and proposed an additional check point for this important fuel characteristic," says Fabriek. " It would appear that perhaps there is insufficient knowledge of how refineries work today to release marine fuel, and of the limitations of the test