The large carrying capacity of the ships, the height of the load limits and the unlimited seas and oceans on the roads of these cargo ships have always made maritime transport attractive. While a total of 2.6 billion tons of cargo was transported by sea in 1970 at the global level, the total cargo transported by sea reached 11 billion tons in 2018 before the Covid-19 outbreak.

When bulk cargo is left aside, dry cargo transportation has completely turned into container transportation. Container ship capacities also increased from 1500 to 20,000 containers.

However, now ships also need to change their technical specifications. New maximum emission requirements bring new cost increases in shipbuilding. In order to reduce the negative effects of ships on the environment, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) made it mandatory to use low-sulfur ship fuels as of 2020, with its decision taken in 2016. This policy, called the IMO-2020 regulation, aims to reduce the current 3.5% sulfur content in fuel oil to 0.5%. 3.5 million barrels of high-sulphur ship fuel is used daily in the world and this amount corresponds to half of the total world fuel-oil consumption.

However, the huge increase in oil prices, especially after the Russia-Ukraine War, has caused shipowners to worry. The increase in fuel costs and the investments to be made for the transition to clean fuels will also have effects such as capacity reductions due to the need for more fuel storage. As a result of these regulations, it is predicted that the industry will face additional costs of 5-10 billion dollars.

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