Digital technology is driving positive change across the maritime transport sector, enabling fleet operators to reduce fuel consumption and costs, bolster fuel security, and protect crews.  

But with a bewildering array of vendors out there, choosing the right digitization partner for your business can be challenging.  

Here we explore five key questions to ask when considering a partner to help you optimize fuel use and protect your fleet.

1: Is the solution truly digital?

A truly digital solution relies on digital data collection methods, such as sensors and automated systems, rather than manual processes. This ensures the accuracy and reliability of the data, which is crucial for making informed decisions about fuel and fleet management.

However not all digitization is equal.

Designing a customizable dashboard with multiple features is the easier aspect of creating a digital solution for displaying and interpreting maritime data. However, it’s an entirely different challenge to travel to places like Walvis Bay, Namibia, or Campeche, Mexico, and install reliable sensors that can feed that dashboard with high-fidelity, trustworthy data.

A truly digitized fuel measurement solution will provide an end-to-end, highly accurate data chain of custody through the entire journey from sensor to delivery. So, ask your vendor where the fuel consumption data their system interprets comes from.

If it comes from noon reports emailed from the ship to the system, then it’s not truly digital. That’s just a digital dashboard fed by analog data derived from traditional, manual fuel measuring processes that are prone to error. In other words, if the fuel ‘sensor’ is someone dropping a measuring stick into a tank on a moving ship, no system can rely on it. Bad data leads to lousy interpretation and bad decisions, and the flashiest dashboard in the world will be worthless if the data feeding it is flawed.

If, on the other hand, the system you’re considering features fuel measurement sensors, what kind are they? As with digitization, it’s important to remember that not all sensors are equal. As the sensor forms the base of your digitization pyramid, it’s critical to understand exactly what type of sensor is being used.

For the highest level of accuracy, the fuel sensors must be based on mass flow meters, which in the marine environment means a Coriolis, or a meter of equal ‘tier one’ specification. Other meters are available, but what you save by using a volumetric meter or a positive displacement meter will be lost in increased maintenance costs and reduced accuracy.

If the solution you are considering is high accuracy based, ask your vendor where they source their meters from. In our experience only ‘tier one’ meters with best-in-class sensors meet our standards and they’re likely to be pharmaceutical, food, and beverage-grade scientific instruments.

Finally, a digital solution will track your vessels’ voyages and ensure they stay on track. As with the fuel measurement data, ask the vendor where their vessel tracking data comes from.

The International Maritime Organization and other management bodies require large ships, including many commercial fishing vessels, to broadcast their position with AIS to avoid collisions. AIS data is open source, so your solution may use an API from a provider that captures and packages this data for commercial sale.

Unfortunately, the AIS antenna isn’t exceptionally reliable because it can be hacked and spoofed to provide false readings. When ship crews manipulate AIS data to go ‘dark’ this way, it usually means they’re using your vessel for their own ends.

The best tracking solutions will install a dedicated, tamper-proof, hack-proof GPS transponder onboard each vessel to provide 100% reliable location data and give you peace of mind that your ships are precisely where they should be.

2: What experience does the team behind the solution have?

Theoretically, anyone can climb Mount Everest, but very few do. Why? Because it requires years of experience, countless close calls, and valuable lessons that seasoned climbers rely on to safely reach the summit and descend.

Similarly, digitization is meant to help mariners navigate unique challenges. So, ask whether your vendor’s team has firsthand experience with those same challenges and how that has shaped their product development.

At Fueltrax, our team comprises seasoned mariners, military veterans, and former Nasa engineers who have worked in some of the world’s most challenging environments. Over the past two decades, they’ve harnessed this experience and used feedback from our customers to continuously refine our product.  

If a vendor has never set foot on a working ship, it’s unlikely they can develop a solution that’s robust and relevant.

3: Are they set up to support post-installation success?

Pricing a product to secure a sale differs from pricing a product for post-installation success. So be sure to explore the company’s confidence in their post-installation service and support with questions like:

• what is their track record?
• is the system tested, proven, and reliable in the field?
• can they evidence this with case studies?
• can you talk to their customers?
• what will your success look like?
• how will they ensure their system delivers on its promise?
• are system upgrades included for life, or do you have to pay each time?

Then, ask your competitors, peers, and industry contacts which company has the best reputation for continued post-installation success.

Finally, bear in mind that short-term cost savings rarely drive long-term success.

4: Do they invest in continuous research and development?

A commitment to R&D shows that your vendor is developing new and improved products and services to fit your needs. So, ask them how they gather the knowledge and insights needed to create new products or discover new ways to improve their existing products and services.

Ask what their relationships with existing customers are like, and whether they have a Customer Panel or Board to help them with R&D. Remember that part of the purpose of research and development is finding ways to gain cost efficiencies without sacrificing accuracy and quality.

5: What is their company culture like?

When you purchase an electronic fuel monitoring system (EFMS), you’re not just buying a tool or one-off service – you’re investing in a critical part of your operational infrastructure. Selecting a vendor should be as strategic as any other decision that has a long-term impact on your business.

Ensure your selected vendor has a culture that aligns with yours by checking:

• what is their approach to partnership?
• do they work collaboratively?
• are they mission-oriented people, or purely technical and commercial?
• what is their attitude to failure?
• do they have specialist maritime industry expertise with an in-depth understanding of your challenges, or are they software first?

Remember that your employees are your first feedback regarding your selected vendor’s performance. Their day-to-day interactions with the product mean they will be the first to feel the impact of poorly considered choices. Low morale can lead to decreased employee engagement, reduced job satisfaction, and higher employee turnover.

So, try to find a vendor who understands that the actual value of the relationship emerges after the EFMS installation. With a foundation of shared values, mutual respect, and open communication, you set the scene for a long-term partnership and continuous innovation focused on delivering more efficient operations and a loyal, happier workforce.

Conclusion

In summary, selecting the right digitization partner isn’t just about choosing the shiniest solution. You need to ask the right questions and focus on a vendor’s technology, experience, post-installation support, commitment to R&D, and cultural alignment. This will ensure you chose a partner equipped to help you navigate the complex challenges of fuel and fleet protection with clarity and confidence.  

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Navigating the complexities of maritime fleet management to achieve operational excellence is a long and challenging voyage.

Electronic fuel management tools such as Fueltrax play a crucial role in improving fuel efficiency and, among other benefits, allow maritime operators to collect and validate the emissions data required by world regulatory authorities.

As the maritime industry progresses with digitization, we look at three key areas where Fueltrax has transformed traditional fleet optimization practices.

1. Reduce the administrative burden on shoreside personnel.

Completing an operational audit of a maritime fleet is traditionally a cumbersome, time-consuming process for shore personnel. They would contact the vessel, wait for scanned copies of log books to arrive, and then do a lot of forensic work to identify whether or not the ship was overconsuming fuel because it was using too many engines.

With an EFMS like Fueltrax installed, they have instantaneous access to information in real-time, freeing them to intervene at the first sign of any anomaly rather than uncovering the issue 30 days later.

2. Transform analysis and forecasting.

With all system data generated by an EFMS like Fueltrax stored in perpetuity, it’s much easier to access historical data for analysis and forecasting.

For example, with fuel consumption, carbon footprint, and carbon intensity figures available within a couple of clicks, it’s now possible to look back and see how vessels behaved in the past under different operational settings. This information can help predict how vessels may act and set up plans accordingly.

3. Align maritime teams around shared goals.

Operating off a unified sensor network makes it easier to reach a consensus.

From the vessel crew up through the shoreside personnel to the boardroom and CEO and management, a system such as Fueltrax allows everyone involved in maritime operations to see the same information at the same time, cutting down on silos and ensuring company practices, standards, and goals are shared.

When everyone involved in a specific goal can see the same metrics and witness how their actions and performance affect its achievement, it’s much easier to drive the behavior change necessary for success.

Despite the numerous benefits of digitization, digital transformation in the maritime transport sector still needs to catch up to other transportation sectors. However, the pace is growing as digital transformation is increasingly recognized as a vital strategy to address numerous challenges and enhance the efficiency of maritime operations.

Fueltrax is proud to lead the digital wave from the front, implementing new technologies and developing digital strategies that help drive new, more sustainable ways of operating and doing business within the maritime industry.

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Despite the drive to Net Zero, our world still runs on oil and gas, which means that fuel is always in demand, widely distributed, and quickly diverted to illegal profit.

The scale of fuel-related theft, smuggling, and fraud runs to hundreds of billions of dollars per year – resulting in massive revenue losses for companies and countries and significant income for corrupt officials, unscrupulous traders, criminal syndicates, militant groups, and terrorist organizations.

The maritime industry is a prime area for fuel theft.

After all, more than a quarter of the total seagoing trade is tankers, and fuel smuggling at sea is a massive industry worldwide.

The single most important factor enabling this shadowy crime to thrive is the lack of visibility, particularly how the maritime industry traditionally measures fuel while bunkering and underway.

Without an EFMS like Fueltrax installed, all fuel measurements on board a vessel are manual. Once fuel is loaded into the ship’s tanks, a second mate drops his tape or stick into the tank, pulls it up, looks to see where the line is, does a calculation, and says OK, that’s how much fuel is in there. That’s done daily, entered in an Excel file, and emailed off in something called a noon report.

There are several problems with this approach.

1. The ship is often moving while sight-based measures are taken. Have you ever tried telling the time from your wristwatch while balanced on the top of a one-legged ladder? It’s like that.
2. Ships’ fuel tanks are unusual shapes, and accurate capacity measurements are impossible. So, the crew calculates fuel volumes using ‘best-estimate’ sounding tables.
3. Sludge in the tank, water, and foam can affect measurement accuracy.
4. Ship crews have multiple responsibilities that correctly prioritize safety above all else. So, noon reports never happen at noon; they’re never done the same way, and the same people do not do them.
5. It’s impossible to audit. Because you’re dipping your tanks, the quality of your measurement is deeply flawed.

The whole process is very prone to human error. And where human error exists, human opportunity for theft is never far behind.

The maritime industry has been slow to address the problem, considering fuel theft, particularly in certain parts of the world, as a necessary ‘cost of business.’ This makes sense because where fuel theft is endemic, corruption is way higher than crews supplementing a poor day rate. So, by trying to address fuel theft, you can destabilize a black market economy, and the bad actors involved in that economy can respond accordingly, meaning well-intentioned fuel theft prevention strategies can sometimes fail.

However, with increased regulation and scrutiny, particularly regarding sustainability, financial incentives exist to address this problem. After all, any fuel lost to theft by an energy company in Nigeria will eventually make its way to that company’s emissions statements. In short, the industry must change its approach.

The solution is to remove as much of the human element fro measuring fuel flows as possible and make the resulting readings as accurate and accessible as possible to all stakeholders.

At Fueltrax, we call this approach seamless visibility.

Our solution is the only real-time, end-to-end, self-contained, and secure active marine fuel and fleet management system. Its closed-loop, tamper-proof, and alarm-protected design ensures it can’t be hacked, jail-broken, or back-doored, setting it apart from other systems.

1. Fueltrax monitors ships’ fuel consumption to ensure the vessel consumes the right amount of fuel for the voyage.
2. It certifies accurate bunkering, ensuring no extra fuel is pumped in or out of the ship’s tanks for criminal benefit.
3. It tracks vessel position with a GPS transponder that, unlike the universally used Automatic Identification System (AIS), cannot be spoofed, hacked, or switched off.
4. It observes the crew through video surveillance with Fueltrax Vision.
5. It secures fuel on board the ship. Pirates cannot steal the fuel as crews cannot access it without triggering alerts to our monitoring centers.

Beyond providing fuel security and savings, Fueltrax enables crew behavior change, allowing them an alternative to the black market/fuel theft cycle.

Historically, crews have agreed to a low day rate because they know they can supplement their income with fuel theft. However, with Fueltrax’s EFMS solution, we’re preventing losses to the extent that it allows energy companies to pay higher day rates to the crews and even pay bonuses to those crews that display the right behavior. This all leads to a better social and economic environment for the crews, the companies, and the societies in which they operate, fostering a sense of hope and optimism for a brighter future.

Of course, people will always find new ways to steal fuel, so fuel theft is not a problem that will ever be solved. This is why the data our systems generate is invaluable.

In certain parts of the world where fuel theft is a problem, we’ve encountered crews trying to tamper with our system. For example, someone may try to open a box, turn it off, disconnect the antenna, or do something similar. One of the advantages of having a system designed by ex-NASA flight control engineers is that we have some really advanced analytics, which means we are immediately alerted.

With three vessel operations centers globally, two of which are in extremely high-risk areas, we continuously evaluate these attempts, connecting the dots, reviewing trends, and helping our customers stay ahead of the fuel theft game wherever it occurs.

We’re aware that we are asking an industry famous for being behind the times regarding technology and reporting to achieve maximum transparency.

And it’s very, very challenging to do that.

However, if there’s one thing we never shy away from at Fueltrax, it’s a challenge.

We’re embracing the opportunity to help the maritime industry transform and modernize its operational procedures and practices and drive positive economic, environmental, social, and governance changes for operators, vessel owners, and crews.

We hope you’ll join us!

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From a historical perspective, it’s fair to say that OSV owners were considered the taxis of the offshore industry. The energy companies simply chartered the vessels they needed from operators and paid for the fuel to complete each voyage.

This business model left energy companies with a problem.

With no visibility, situational awareness, or insights, they wondered if the fuel they paid for was the fuel used for the voyage. The situation was ripe for fuel fraud to take place.

The model was also challenging for vessel owners and the wider OSV sector, with contracts continuously driven down on price and little opportunity for differentiation.

In short, it was an unsustainable race to the bottom.

Climate change and the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015 forced each side to monitor and report their emissions. Whether Scope 1 or Scope 3, both parties were now in the same boat of having to do better for their stakeholders, meaning that they could not afford to waste a drop of fuel or continue to create an environment that made fuel theft a tempting option.

This is where Fueltrax comes into the story.

By installing our humble metering tool into OSVs, we are getting feedback that it is helping billion-dollar energy companies create a synergistic ecosystem where the energy company, the vessel owners, and the crew members work together with clear communication throughout.

And it’s all because of the accurate data and information that Fueltrax delivers.

From the start of tendering through contract award to completion, there is a much more efficient operation. Fueltrax’s accurate data has not only helped energy companies and vessel owners identify fuel wastage points, leading to significant cost savings, but it has also empowered them to take control of their operations. This tool enables people at all levels on both sides of the relationship to share accurate information that helps them do their jobs better, instilling a sense of confidence in their decision-making.  

The data our tool delivers brings people together and encourages them to approach their work in a collaborative way that’s never happened before. It’s not accusatory anymore; it’s more like, “Hey, let’s do better together”. This spirit of collaboration, this shared goal of efficiency and sustainability, is the heart of the transformation we’re celebrating, making everyone feel united and part of a bigger picture.

This collective desire to focus on sustainable performance is changing the industry in lots of positive ways.

For example, some energy companies are devising an incentive mechanism to reward vessel owners and crews for managing fuel and operating the vessel efficiently, facilitated by Fueltrax’s data. Other operators are rewarding crew by raising their day rates. Petronas is lending operators 100% of the cost for installing Fueltrax and amortizing repayment over the tender period.

These are all great examples of how Fueltrax is helping owners and energy companies explore more sustainable contracting methods. These methods allow for a win-win situation for both sides, fostering a positive outlook for the industry’s future.

This is exciting because we meet many industry veterans who are resistant to sustainability and ESG, often due to concerns about the potential impact on profitability. However, we can give them examples showing that profit and purpose coexist and that their business does not have to lose money by doing the right thing.

In fact, it will thrive as solutions such as Fueltrax continue to transform the industry and move it toward a more sustainable future.

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Ryan Nulsen, Director of Client Engagement, recently attended an invite-only conference for Total Energies in Paris, FR. Below are his thoughts on what he recognized as necessary to Total Energies and what they want to achieve.

Successfully reducing the company’s carbon footprint demands an efficient culture. This culture can only exist when driven by all members of the organization.

TotalEnergies is the first supermajor to recognize that success and sustainability are not mutually exclusive and that it can succeed while improving sustainability and reducing carbon emissions.

Client/Vendor/Contractor relationships are critical to reducing carbon emissions, particularly Scope 3 emissions, and TotalEnergies is taking steps to incentivize their clients/vendors/contractors to share in the savings.

What was once a strictly transactional relationship (charterer & vessel owner) is transitioning to a joint venture with a shared goal: Produce the safest and cleanest energy in the most efficient manner possible.

By facing the reality that fossil fuel production will continue for decades, TotalEnergies is leading the pack in ‘walking the talk’ regarding reducing carbon emissions.

TotalEnergies’ innovation of the charterer/vessel owner relationship will quickly change the industry, and the planet will thank them.

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Aramco is in a very difficult position and are doing an admirable job building more sustainable operations. Their desire to meet Vision 2030 and Net-Zero 2060 is real, but they need the market to help them. The oil field is demanding all the marine tonnage they can find, which makes enforcement of fuel monitoring standards more difficult.

Aramco wants to be a better steward of their fuel and are actively influencing fuel monitoring standards when possible. As a whole, the region places a premium on production, not fuel monitoring and fuel security, which makes the transition to more efficient operations less palatable to vessel owners. The good news here is that there are organic initiatives by vessel owners to reduce carbon emissions. Since Aramco supplies their clients’ fuel, and that the fuel is much cheaper than anywhere else, there is a less tangible benefit for reducing carbon emissions.

Due to forthcoming CII regulatory changes and government launched GHG reduction initiatives, that benefit becomes more tangible, which is driving select vessel owners to start reducing their carbon emissions. The other silver lining to this region is that due to the close proximity of so many major Oil/Gas companies, once one company gets an edge, the others follow soon after.

Aramco is already trending in the right direction by investing in proper fuel management (albeit slower than other supermajors globally), so it is a matter of time before the rest of the MENA region follows.

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