Singapore surpasses Rotterdam to be world’s largest biofuel bunker port

According to media reports, in the third quarter of this year, the Port of Singapore surpassed Rotterdam as the largest biofuel bunker port in the world, with sales of 227,000 metric tons, up 67.5% from Rotterdam’s 137,175 metric tons.

The Port of Rotterdam’s head of liquid bulk business intelligence, Ronald Backers, ascribed this in part to Singapore’s robust bio-blended bunker sales. Rotterdam’s performance was further hampered by the Dutch government’s reduction in subsidies for marine biofuel.

With fuel sales five times that of Rotterdam, Singapore had long been the world leader in conventional bunkering but had fallen behind in the switch to alternative fuels. Recent events, however, suggest that this marine competitiveness is changing. Vitol predicted at SIBCON earlier this month that Singapore’s biofuel sales would soon quadruple yearly.