Singapore will be the first port in the world to go fully digital for bunkering, jettisoning all paper bunker delivery notes.
At a keynote speech during the biennial Singapore International Bunkering Conference and Exhibition on 9 October, Singapore’s Senior Minister of State for Transport, Dr. Amy Khor said this will be effective from 1 April 2025, when all bunker suppliers in Singapore port must provide digital bunkering services and issue electronic bunker delivery notes (e-BDN).
Dr. Khor pointed out this will speed up the fuelling process in Singapore. She said: “This will boost efficiency and transparency during the bunkering process in Singapore and is expected to help the industry save close to 40,000 man-days annually.”
Singapore, the world’s largest bunkering port by sales volumes, sold nearly 52 million tonnes of marine fuels in 2023. The city-state also piloted digital bunkering services with several local physical fuel suppliers in the last year.
In line with the mandating of digital bunkering, the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) will set up a centralised e-BDN record verification facility, where e-BDNs can be verified against information sent to the authority.
In addition, another government agency, Enterprise Singapore, through the Singapore Standards Council (SSC), will launch a new Singapore Standard (SS) 709 Specification for Digital Bunkering Supply Chain Documentation, to ensure data consistency and interoperability between digital systems and facilitate smoother transactions.
Digitalisation was among the few initiatives announced by Singapore’s authorities today.
MPA will also launch two AI-based applications, DocuMind and DocuMatch, to expedite and verify ship certificate renewals for Singapore-registered vessels. This will reduce the time taken to renew ship certificates to mere minutes, compared with three days previously.
This represents a key milestone to further strengthen the competitiveness and efficiency of bunkering in Singapore since 2017, when the city-state became the first port globally to adopt mass flow metering to verify the volume of delivered bunkers.
Martina Li
Asia Correspondent
