The Maritime and Port Authority (MPA) of Singapore is revoking the bunker fuel supply license of Transocean Oil at the port of Singapore, effective immediately, after finding "falsifications of records and discrepancies," MPA said on Monday.
The authority had carried out checks on Transocean Oil operations at the port of Singapore in March and April this year and those checks found "falsifications of records and discrepancies in the stock movement logbooks on board the bunker tankers" the company operates, Reuters quoted MPA as saying.
Transocean Oil Pte Ltd, set up in 2003, had been accredited by the MPA as an independent licensed bunker supplier and trader to provide bunkering services to international ships calling at Singapore and other ports in the region.
As of January 1 this year, Singapore made mass flow meters (MFM) mandatory for fuel-oil deliveries at the port in an attempt to bring more transparency to the bunkering services, bunker quantities, and prices.
Transocean Oil is not the only bunker operator stripped of license at Singapore in recent months.
At the end of August, the authority said that it would not be renewing the bunker supplier licenses of Panoil Petroleum Pte Ltd and Universal Energy Pte Ltd when they expire on August 31, 2017, due to unauthorized alterations they had made on their bunker tankers. Universal Energy's bunker craft operator license was not renewed either, and as a result neither company will be allowed to operate as a bunker supplier and bunker craft operator in the Port of Singapore, MPA said.
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The International Bunker Industry Association (IBIA) said at the time that "the news that the bunkering licenses of the two companies won't be renewed shows that the MPA is taking appropriate action against companies trying to circumvent the effectiveness and accuracy of MFM systems."
Last week, Aegean Marine Petroleum Network said that it would exit the Singapore market as a physical supplier as of January 2018, with president Jonathan McIlroy saying that "The bunkering market in general, and the Singapore market in particular, are extremely competitive. We had hoped that enforcement of mandatory mass flow meter (MFM)-equipped bunker barging in January would have driven commercial improvement in the Singapore market allowing Aegean to compete profitably. However, 2017 has seen heightened commercial pressures in Singapore, and as a result, management has determined that Aegean's resources can be more profitably deployed elsewhere."
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More
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