When the International Maritime Organization announced it would introduce a new, lower, sulfur emission ceiling for bunkering fuel, many in the energy industry worried that demand for high-sulfur fuel oil would suffer a blow from which it would not be able to recover. But then scrubbers—equipment that strips sulfur from bunkering fuel—were floated as a relatively easy to deploy alternative to switching to low-sulfur fuel. Now, however, scrubbers’ future is questionable. S&P Global Platts reported recently that at a maritime industry event, the MARE Forum in Houston, scrubbers had garnered significant attention, and this attention had not been particularly positive. A little over 1,500 vessels have been fitted with sulfur scrubbers as of October this year, according to the senior vice president of engineering and technology at the American Bureau of Shipping. By January 2020, when the new emission rules come into effect, the number of scrubbers both installed […]