Americas Difficult Place to Source Sustainable Bunker Fuels: MWA Panel
PANAMA CITY — Take up of sustainable bunker fuels in the Americas continues to trail Europe and market participants say that gap is unlikely to close anytime soon as high costs and limited demand keep adoption sluggish.
That was the prevailing view during a bunkering panel at Maritime Week Americas 2026 in Panama City, where shipowners, suppliers and fuel buyers pointed to uneven regulations and weak customer appetite as major hurdles for the marine sector.
Paul Ross, fuel procurement manager for Royal Caribbean Group and moderator of the panel, opened discussion by asking why sustainable marine fuels remain so difficult to source across the Americas.
“I think specifically to the Americas, one of the challenges is you have lopsided regulations,” said Michael McNamara, vice president of global fuel supply for Miami-based Carnival Corp. “So [the] marine [segment] is always going to compete with someone else for that fuel.”
“You have mandates and financial incentives — RINs and blender credits — and everyone gets to take the credits, except for marine. Then marine must outbid everybody and then compensate the supplier for all the value they are going to lose when they sell to us … and it makes it very difficult for us financially.”
Panelists said limited buyer commitment has also slowed development of infrastructure needed to support biofuel bunkering.
Capt. Chris Roberts, head of sales for Minerva Bunkering USA, said suppliers are hesitant to invest in storage and logistics without consistent purchasing commitments from customers.
“The the chicken-and-egg issue comes up every time,” Roberts said. “If you want biofuel available, you need tanks and infrastructure in place, but suppliers need firm commitments first.”
Roberts noted that demand for biofuel bunkers along the U.S. East Coast remains extremely limited.
“On the U.S. East Coast there has been one buyer that has looked for biofuel that we’ve talked to, and it’s happened four times in the last 18 months,” Roberts said. “Everyone asks about it and they don’t want to lift.”
So with buyers hesitant to buy and suppliers not carrying fuel on that lack of demand, moving from traditional fossil fuels to biofuels looks to be farther off than anticipated.
Ultimately, expense, due to renewable credits and a higher manufacturing cost, has the present and the near future of bunkering in the Americas based in fossil fuels.
“The finances and demands, it’s very tough in the sense that at the end of the day the cheapest way to operate a ship is still high-sulfur fuel and a scrubber,” added Yousef El Bagoury, senior fuel procurement and sustainable fuel specialist for Montreal-based shipper CSL.
“And right now I see that spread [between bio and high-sulfur fuel] at $700-800 a ton difference. So when you say, hey, I have this biofuel and the spread is going to be even more, I have to take that back to my customer and say here is the cost because we are using biofuel,” he said.
Reporting by Tom Sosnowski, tsosnowski@opisnet.com, Editing by Erik Papke, epapke@opisnet.com.