The other day we had the last crew change for this tour where I wasn't participating.
This is week 9 for me. It's been a good if long tour- medium paced, and I was in good spirits despite working overtime, something I have had ZERO interest in doing the past few years.
The value of the dollar dropped enough that working OT became necessary for my plans this summer. And I did well with it until this week. This week I'm feeling the effects of being away from home for far longer than normal. It's getting to be a bit of a slog and the quality of my sleep has gone in the toilet.
Time to go home and recharge. Less than 2 weeks to go.
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There has been a big surge of fuel contaminations in the global bunker fuel supply. Singapore, the largest bunkering port in the world, has had major issues as they distributed a lot of bad fuel to a lot of ships.
You know, driving your car on the highway, if the engine dies, you pull over and call AAA. Driving your ship, your engine dies, you call a bankruptcy lawyer and maybe a priest.
Houston, the US's largest port for oil, has also had, (and possibly has, as in present tense) issues with this.
It's an issue of shit ingredients, whether intentional or unintentional, and disruptive regulation forcing rapid change (in my opinion) without concurring planning and quality control measure implementation.
3 years ago, we supplied 2 types of bunker fuels- 2 1/2, if you count the stuff we thinned with diesel for old ships than could no longer burn the heavy stuff, and certain cruise ships that power their propulsion with diesel generators turning electric motors.
These days we carry... lets's see... *counts on fingers, removes one boot, (muttering) 'carry the 5..., where's my abacus?*...
We carry a lot of fuels. Some of which suppliers don't carry, but we get sent recipes to make by blending several grades of oil together in a custom mishmash, right in our tanks. Now, I hate blending fuels on board, because it's a pain in the ass and the folks who make us do it the most rent their tank space from a tank farm that is run like a halfway house above a Turkish bazaar... I actually like the process and the challenge, but it can be stressful if the shoreside guys are dicking off.
Still, point being that fuel issues are obvious coming from multiple sources. There's so much variability in the base components of something so generic as heavy fuel oil- It's not like gasoline, where the ratio and blend of hydrocarbon molecules by type is tightly controlled. HFO is made up of residual hydrocarbons, long chains of carbon atoms strung together. anywhere, in any ratio- it's residual oil, the shit left over after you refine out the more in-demand hydrocarbons to make gas, diesel, kerosine, jet fuel, naptha, etc. You might have a lot of 25 carbon atom molecules, or a lot of 50 carbon atom molecules, and a smaller amount of molecules from every possible number between 20-50. Or an even amount of everything, who knows. No one looks to check. They also don't look to check if other things are mixed in there too, say if a supplier dumps waste motor oil in that tank, or some dink got rid of a couple of ancient buckets of aircraft parts cleaner that were found but which are no longer legal to use. In they go. But hey, turns out that stuff sometimes causes engines to stall, or when the oil is heated a bit, it gases off and oh, yeah, it's carcinogenic in vapor form.
Heavy fuel oils smell different all the time because the base ingredients are different all the time- it's mostly a matter of cutting the fuel with other fuel oils to make it have the quality you want.
Some days my eyes burn so badly from the vapors that I have to put on a respirator and goggles. Some days it just smells like egg salad farts.
My employer has to keep us alive to keep working. They're pretty good at risk mitigation, but this is a new wrinkle.
The industry has noted finally that companies sometimes slip in unwanted chemicals, some of which are dangerous, in heavy oil. Some bunker suppliers buy their feedstock from waste oil processors. Some COC's, which are chlorine-containing hydrocarbons, are EXTREMELY toxic to humans... and hey, more importantly, turns out they can also cause fuel issues in ships. I mean, fuck the people who have to handle this stuff, right? They volunteered, but who gives a fuck about what it does to people, it's not good for ships! We better think about doing something to control that... someday soon.
And yet, COC's aren't normally tested for. Because normally they shouldn't be in the oil. But sometimes they are. Environmentalists don't care about people, we know that. They care about the environment to the extent that it causes subjective pleasure to their sense of personal well-being and aesthetics. Sulfur... is the devil when it comes to oil. Nox, Sox, carbon diox, Greenhouse Gases are Literally Hitler.
Shit that isn't a greenhouse gas, in your gas, OTOH, getting anyone to care is an economic battle.
When I am the benevolent dictator that the world so desperately needs, maybe I'll look into doing something beyond trying to not die of cancer personally.
Think of modern car engines. They can run on straight 87, midgrade, high grade, even avgas... or they can run on 10% ethanol blended in the gas Or 85% ethanol. Or 100. We also know that the mileage and weird shit that can happen vary based on the ethanol content. Imagine if you didn't know if you were getting good ethanol in your gas or some watery shit that some rain got into, and then that got thrown in your gas. I mean, you can add a bottle or two of acetone in there, make the water gas off somewhat, but what's that going to do over time? Turns out, it ain't good. Brazil uses a lot of ethanol in their fuel. Starters don't last as long in Brazilian cars compared to American, because they are used more. It's normal for engines to stall at every traffic light, even in newer cars in Brazil.
Ships, well, it's not that easy. A stalled engine is more than a matter of pressing the pedal and turning a key, but the analogy holds.
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