US – Safety Alert for Marine Heavy Fuel oil in Houston area 6 August 2018 No.979 Tweet Download PDF (408KB) It is alerted that since April this year, the vessel engine problems caused by contaminated vessel fuel oil bunkers supplied at Houston and surrounding ports in the USA. We also obtained further information about the recent same sort of problems occurred in Panama as well as Singapore. Under these circumstances, please pay thorough attention whenever you use fuel oil bunkers at the ports in the concerned areas. Outline of "Safety Alert 10-18" US Coast Guard (USCG) Marine Safety Alert 10-18, “USCG Marine Safety Alert 10-18: We’ve all experienced bad gas, but how about IFO 380? U.S. Gulf Coast Bunker Contamination” (Please refer to the attachment ), raises awareness of a significant emerging problem at Houston and surrounding ports in the USA regarding contaminated vessel fuel oil bunkers and the use of blended fuel oil such as Intermediate Fuel Oil (IFO 380). The Outline of the Marine Safety Alert 10-18 are as follows; Trouble The fuel oil contamination could bring engine failures which might constitute the factor of associated losses of propulsion potentially having catastrophic and wide ranging consequences. The presence of these substances within the fuel is in violation of MARPOL Annex VI regulation 18.3 and Clause 5 of ISO 8217 which indicates the fuel shall not include any added harmful substance. However, this fuel oil contained the substances which lead to engine failures, sticking fuel plungers and fuel pump seizures and other engine fuel oil supply system. Furthermore, the fuel may increase sediment levels at separators and fuel filters and, in some cases, may completely clog filters. The standard fuel oil test methods found in the ISO 8217 specification will not detect these underlying problems of contamination. It is important for the vessel owners, the managers, and the vessel operators to send and analyse the fuel oil sample in order to identify a