WEEK #22 – 2020 May 28, 2020
Editorial Dear Readers, It is Thursday the 28th of May and the final issue before June. We are in the continuous grip of the pandemic, although we are slowly starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel. I only wish that it is not the headlights of a train coming towards us. Some airlines plan to gradually resume flying their normal routes, but of course, it won’t help much if you will have to go into quarantine on arrival or if your desired destination doesn’t even allow you to enter. So, yes, it will take a bit of time for sure to get things back to the new normal! I have been following the situation regarding the oil prices a bit, and since oil/bunker is a major thing in shipping and a major cost, the control, quality and price of the product does play a major role in the world economy. When the oil price is high, there will also be much more project cargo around. Singapore plays a big role in the bunker trade as does Rotterdam, and therefore, it didn’t escape my notice that a major, bunker trading scandal happened in the Lion City (recently again I might add). If you read this article from the South China Morning Post, it will give you an idea into what’s been going on. However, newspaper content should be corroborated. So, I confronted an old friend of mine who has experience in this area from Singapore in the nineties. He had this to say about the bunker trade in Singapore—at least back then. So, I guess that it is indeed like Mao Tse Tung famously said once: “In the cleanest water lives no fish. Although Singapore does portray itself as a beacon of light in the sometimes murky business world, things DO happen there that belong to grey and shady business even to this day. Finishing this chapter off, here is the official promo video about bunker trade in Singapore. Don’t think for a minute that we do not have our own issues in Europe. In Malta, a wonderful island in the Mediterranean and part of the EU recently, scandals have abounded, even including the murder of a journalist who happened to write about nepotism and business corruption reaching into the government. So, perhaps the shades of grey exist among us in most places—some lighter, some darker. 165