World Oil Outlook - Opec

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will fully comply with the regulations and the expectation that the use of scrubbers
will increase gradually, leads to a flattening in the required switching from IFO in the
period after 2020.
It must be recognized that uncertainties exist over the implications of IMO regulations
for marine fuels and energy efficiency improvements in the sector. Increasingly
there are some noises being made that the implementation year for tightening global
fuel standards could be shifted to 2025, rather than 2020, as originally proposed.
Moreover, another option for compliance – especially longer term and for larger new
vessels – is increasingly being discussed, namely liquefied natural gas (LNG) (Box 5.1).
Nevertheless, from the current perspective, projections indicate that some 0.5 mb/d of
IFO will be switched to distillate by 2015, 1.3 mb/d by 2020 and 1.9 mb/d by 2035.
The last product group – ‘other products’ – consists mainly of heavy products,
including bitumen, lubricants, waxes, solvents, still gas, coke, sulphur, as well as the
direct use of crude oil, for example, in Saudi Arabia, China and Japan. In the longterm,
however, it is assumed that the direct use of crude oil will be eliminated and
replaced with more cost effective solutions. At the global level, demand for these products
is projected to increase by 1.1 mb/d by the end of the forecast period, compared
to 2011. This represents an average growth rate of 0.5% p.a.
It should also be noted that these ‘other products’ taken individually demonstrate
a range of longer term growth rates, from declines in the direct use of crude
oil, an essentially flat outlook for lubricants and waxes derived from crude, moderate
growth for asphalt and stronger growth for petroleum coke grades, as well as for still
gas and sulphur, as refineries become more complex and move increasingly to low and
ultra-low sulphur (ULS) products.
Box 5.1
Will LNG become an important new bunker fuel?
With new and more severe emission standards on the horizon, ship operators are
being pushed into either switching to cleaner, alternative fuels, or fitting exhaust
gas cleaning systems. For 2020, the IMO has set a global limit of