August of next year will see some major changes for marine navigation. It's when the North American ECA will come into force, introducing a 1% sulphur restriction, in line with the Baltic and North Sea ECAs. According to London-based shipbrokers Gibson, this change is expected to have asignificant impact on shipping.

"The sulphur level in all ECAs is due to be furtherreduced to a 0.1% sulphur fuel limit from January 2015, which again is likely to have a major impact. Beyond this, the next major issue is the proposed IMO legislation shifting all bunkers to less than 0.5% sulphur, due to be introduced globally in 2020. However, it is highly unlikely that there will be sufficientavailability of low sulphur fuel oil to meet this requirement by 2020 and the IMOs review process planned for 2018 is almost certain to delay the introduction of this low sulphur requirement until 2025".

The reductioncould leave owners with the decisionto effectively rule out the use of all residual fuel, switching to low sulphur fuels such as distillate (with even LNG being discussed). However, the use of new technologies like scrubbers to meet the strict sulphur regulations may offer an alternative, although pilot projects suggest that currentsolutions may not yet be commercially viable.