As a marine fuel supplier, we are committed to conducting our operations in a responsible and sustainable manner and to ensure ESG issues are escalated in a timely manner to our stakeholders and shareholders. From a treasury perspective and finance perspective, the journey will take time as implementing and enforcing such legislation in various jurisdictions (in which we provide bunker services) are progressing but remains at an early stage. As with many initiatives, it will bear higher operating cost for sustainable fuel so this will have an impact on net income for the supply chain.

We can see already some divergence as more western banks begin to factor in ESG score card when it comes down to obtaining green loans and sustainable finance. In parallel, western financial institutions would expect a roadmap on our carbon neutral effort and how we decarbonize our business as we move into 2050. CPN is fully aware of the challenges in the industry as such, we are formulating a working plan on decarbonization, and we do foresee that the industry will be switching to green bunker fuel in the medium term.

We have established an ESG committee to address these issues by formulating a policy. With our clients, we continue to educate and update them the local regulations pertaining to sustainable fuel development and our plan is to work with suppliers to provide such feedstock to them in a timely manner. From the social aspect, we truly value diversity in the workplace and we have established forums for junior and minority employees to raise their concerns, if any. We put a lot of emphasis ensuring that our companies are not bound to break any local regulations and it goes without saying that we have a very robust KYC and credit process to ensure the oil and vessels we use are not sanctioned.

We do openly discuss our ESG framework with banks or vendors if we are asked to do it. At the current environment, banks do evaluate as our profitability and shareholder support more, but we understand it is important for us to make the sustainable transition in the medium term for our company to continue and get the support we need from banks and third party vendors. At the end of the day, 2050 is not very far away. One of the hurdles that we have encountered is that after CPN has delivered our first batch of biofuel in August 2023, do we see soaring demand from the customers? The answer is not obvious as biofuel is at least 30% to 40% more expensive than conventional fuel per se so there must be a fine balance for our buyers to make this decision.

Commodities is a traditional industry which still heavily rely on papers and faxes, and this is the comfort zone and how the industry really works. One thing that amazes me is the utilization of blockchain technology to at least giving us the chance to send our Bill of Lading (title of oil) on an approved blockchain platform which is approved by the local regulator. The transaction will be paperless and move faster than Fax network. Finally, global warming is real, and the entire supply chain will need to formulate a corporate plan to incorporate sustainable and renewable fuel in the eco-system.