Marine fuel trading firm Shipergy has signed what it considers the bunker industry's first procurement contract priced on energy delivered rather than tonnes of fuel, the company announced in an emailed statement on Thursday.

Under the multi-year agreement with a European shipowner and operator, Shipergy will procure fuel for the customer's fleet with performance benchmarked in dollars per gigajoule ($/GJ) rather than the conventional dollars per metric tonne ($/mt). The approach addresses a long-standing inefficiency in bunker procurement: fuel has historically been traded on a per-tonne basis even though the usable energy content of a given cargo can vary with its density, viscosity, and blend composition.

Reference energy values for the contract are drawn from Shipergy's Energy Beacon service, a tool developed by the firm that provides buyers with a ranked comparison of supplier energy content.

"Each quarter, Shipergy's achieved cost of energy delivered, calculated from actual invoice values and laboratory-measured Net Calorific Value on every delivery, is compared against the energy-adjusted market benchmark," the company said. Net Calorific Value testing is already a standard component of bunker quality analysis performed by independent fuel testing laboratories, but linking those results directly to the commercial pricing mechanism marks a departure from conventional practice.

Where Shipergy demonstrates a cost saving, the benefit is shared between the two parties under a gain-share mechanism, which the firm says fully aligns buyer and supplier interests for the first time in bunker procurement.

The first delivery under the contract — a stem of marine gas oil (MGO) at a Northwest European hub — was completed earlier this month.

"The market prices fuel in dollars per tonne, but ships do not run on tonnes, they run on energy," Daniel Rose, CEO of Shipergy, said in the statement. "Two cargoes at the same price can differ by five per cent or more in the energy they actually deliver, and until now no procurement contract has recognised that."

"This agreement changes the basis on which marine fuel is bought," Rose continued. "We are measured, and rewarded, on the true cost of energy delivered to the ship. We believe every fleet will buy this way within a decade."

The contract model arrives as the shipping industry faces intensifying pressure to improve energy efficiency under International Maritime Organization regulations, including the Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII) framework that rates vessels on operational carbon intensity. As owners increasingly adopt alternative fuels such as LNG, biofuels, and methanol — each with distinct energy densities — the gap between price-per-tonne and actual energy delivered is expected to widen, potentially strengthening the case for energy-based procurement structures.

Source: Ship & Bunker