Maersk: Scrubbers target 3M tons HFO

In the investor conference call held by Maersk today (20 Feb) after release of their 2019 annual accounts, numbers on the amount of HFO versus VLSFO emerged.

Presently Maersk's fuel consumption is split with 10% for 0.1% Sulphur fuel (for the ECA zones which have been in place for several years), 80% for VLSFO (0.5% low-Sulphur fuel) and 10% HFO - i.e. "good old" bunker fuel which can be used when you have a scrubber.

Their plan is to increase this to 25% HFO usage by end 2020.

Maersk uses approximately 12 million tons of bunker fuel annually. Hence presently this equals 1.2 million tons of HFO, but with a target of 3 million tons by end-year.

With a price difference between HFO and VLSFO of 200 USD/ton this means that the annualized fuel savings from the scrubbers could reach 600 Million USD by end 2020 from a present level of 240 Million USD annualized.

If it is assumed that the proportion of HFO is increased linearly from 10% now to 25% at the end of 2020, this means a fuel cost saving of 420M USD for the year 2020. Of course this needs to be seen in the context of the fact that the scrubber installation is a capital cost which needs to be repaid as well as the need to maintain and operate the scrubbers which also adds cost.