The Future of Fuel Oil: Power Generation?

[Marina Schwarz + 1,576]

With the new IMO emissions rules a lot of fuel oil with high sulfur content will become unnecessary, at least for the maritime industry. But some say Asian power generators would be happy to use it to make electricity as long as the price falls low enough. Could we end up with a fuel oil shortage, I wonder.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

For both the West and the East, the more logical result will be diversion into manufacture of plastics.  Those prices are historically way high, and there is lots of room for both manufacture of monomers and of polymers .  Just my thought. 

[John Foote + 1,135]

14 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

For both the West and the East, the more logical result will be diversion into manufacture of plastics.  Those prices are historically way high, and there is lots of room for both manufacture of monomers and of polymers .  Just my thought. 

Saudi Aramco is making a mega-investment along these lines. No point using oil for petrochem in the US with our gas supplies, a fundamental competitive advantage the US has. 

Saudi predominately burns oil for electricity in their western regions. If a region has access to gas, or even LNG, is folly. Also plays hell on your turbines, shortening time between rebuilds.