So Much For the Low Sulfur Bets: "Pandemic Forces Ship Owners to Shelve Scrubber Plans"

Via gCaptain, June 12:

Ship owners are postponing or canceling the installation of “scrubbers” that extract harmful sulfur emissions from their vessels as the coronavirus pandemic tightens finances.

Regulations from United Nations agency the International Maritime Organization (IMO), which took effect in January, were viewed by the oil and shipping industries as one of the first worldwide efforts to enforce environmental change.

The rules aimed to make ships use fuel with a sulfur content of 0.5%, compared with 3.5% previously. Operators had the alternative option to install devices – scrubbers – to strip out the pollutant, which causes lung problems among humans and contributes to acidification of oceans and acid rain, but has not been directly linked to climate change like carbon.

In the run-up to IMO 2020, dozens of traders and ship owners, bet on installing scrubbers hoping to make a profit from buying cheaper high-sulfur fuel as the newly developed 0.5% alternative would be in tight supply.

But with an average cost of $2 million to install just one, the stakes were already high for fleet operators often facing investments of more than $100 million. Now the industry financial squeeze, caused by a decline in demand for freight services due to the COVID-19 crisis, may mean scrubbers become less of an option for ship owners to comply with regulations.

Leading Norwegian firm Wallenius Wilhemsen, which transports cars and other vehicles, told Reuters it had canceled scrubbers for nine ships in the past few months and postponed an additional eight until later this year or 2021....

....MUCH MORE

I wonder if Euronav's world's-largest-tanker,  TI Oceania, is making any money. Our last note on the behemouth was the outro from May 17's "A Huge Fleet Of 117 Tankers Is Bringing Super Cheap Crude To China":

The ship OilPrice uses as their graphic is Euronav's TI Oceania which along with its sister ship TI Europe is the largest capacity (3.1mm bbl) Ultra-Large Crude Carrier in the world. And which last time we looked at it was working as the world's largest gas station off Malaysia and Singapore:
Euronav Repurposes The World's Largest Tanker to Fuel Bunker for IMO 2020 Compliant Juice

Which would seem to be verified by Marine Traffic

Position Received: 2020-05-18 02:16 UTC
6 minutes ago

Vessel's Local Time:
2020-05-18 10:16 LT (UTC +8)

Area: INDO - Malacca Strait

Current Port: SUNGAI LINGGI

Latitude / Longitude: 2.344667° / 101.9109°

Status: At Anchor

Speed/Course: 0 kn / 17 °

AIS Source: Terrestrial AIS

TI Europe was chartered by Glencore and is also at anchor off Malaysia.

As of a couple hours ago TI Oceania is still parked off Sungai Linggi which means it is still holding the low-sulfur crude it was  selling as bunker fuel and which, unfortunately was purchased for $447/tonne ($60 bbl). A good price last fall but not so good right now.

"Say boss, you know that LSFO trade?"
"It's become an investment"