I’ve been randomly following that YouTube channel “What’s Going on with Shipping?” and they’ve had a lot of discussion about contaminated fuel possibly causing these ship blackouts.
Here’s what you need to know about “contaminated fuel” on really big ships. Having built this stuff and know where to find the makers, tech manuals, specs, catalogs, and all the rest, I can tell you that the US Navy wrote the book on how to keep their fuel clean and what to do if it gets junk in it. There are dozensplus kinds/sizes of filters, strainers, moisture separaters, krap detectors, and all the rest that it takes to keep motor fuel serviceable.
Understanding that these big troublesome tubs are not “US Navy” it’s worth knowing that the guys who design and build them have the exact same access to the stuff the Navy uses.
Anyone building and paying good money for a 40,000 plus horsepower diesel engine is not going to scrimp on whatever it takes to insure it’s fed clean fuel. Aristotle Onassis hisself never lost a ship or a bridge due to dirty fuel.
Note that there are no reports of any ship having to steam clean its fuel tank to restart and get underway. So nobody has dumped a barrel full of dirt into a fuel tank.
That leaves sabotage, lazyass pre-checklisting, langwidge barriers, or some other really really dunderheaded level of incompetence that amount to the same thing?