Bunker prices have climbed 76% since the US war on Iran began reshaping trade routes, and engine monitoring specialist CM Technologies (CMT) says that move has turned engine performance data from a nice-to-have into a hard commercial lever for shipowners.

Add VLSFO trading at around US$881/mt, a fleet averaging 13 years of age according to Clarksons data, and vessels steaming longer distances as masters reroute around conflict zones, and the arithmetic facing operators is unforgiving. Every gram of excess fuel burned per kilowatt now carries a double cost — the bunker bill itself and the carbon penalty attached to it.

"Shipowners cannot control the carbon price, and they have limited control over the price of bunker fuel, but they can investigate whether their ageing ships and engines are running as efficiently as they can," said David Fuhlbrügge, joint managing director at CMT.

The regulatory backdrop sharpens that incentive. Shipping is already inside the EU Emissions Trading System, with methane and nitrous oxide brought into the scheme in 2026. FuelEU Maritime has entered its first verification period this year. The IMO's Carbon Intensity Indicator continues to require ships of 5,000gt and above to calculate and report their operational carbon intensity. Under each regime, poor combustion translates directly into money — and measurable, reportable emissions.

Small faults, big bills

The economics of engine degradation are not marginal. "Small problems result in significant increases in specific fuel oil consumption and spikes in carbon emissions," Fuhlbrügge said. "But if crews have reliable cylinder pressure and combustion data, they can make the necessary adjustments to reduce emissions and energy losses."

CMT's answer is its PREMET X diesel performance analyser, a portable device that measures cylinder pressure during engine operation. Built around a Kistler PiezoSMART pressure sensor, it analyses and exports engine pressure data so engineers can examine the combustion process and flag anomalies before they metastasise into fuel overconsumption.

The hardware is only half the story. The PREMET Fleet Manager tool compares engine performance across a shipping company's fleet, and all data uploads to the browser-based PREMET Cloud, where readings from sister engines can be benchmarked and trended over time.

That trend capability matters. A single engine reading, Fuhlbrügge argues, captures only a fragment of the picture. "Before considering what can be changed around the ship, it makes sense to know whether the machinery already installed is giving the performance expected from it," he said.

For technical managers running mixed-age fleets, the pitch is essentially a capital-deferral argument: tuning the engines you already own, rather than waiting on new tonnage or retrofit investment, is currently one of the few cost levers entirely within an operator's control.

Injection diagnostics without opening fuel lines

PREMET X can also be supplied with CMT's acoustic emission sensor, which adds a diagnostic layer on the fuel-injection process. The non-penetrative sensor detects acoustic signals from events such as fuel passing through the injector nozzle, injector needle movement, and the opening and closing of the fuel pump spill.

In practical terms, that lets engineers examine injection timing and identify deviations, late combustion or leaking injectors without penetrating the engine's high-pressure fuel lines — a faster, safer diagnostic path than traditional methods on a two-stroke main engine.

Adoption is already broad. CMT counts more than 200 companies operating the latest generation of PREMET X devices, with each shipping company running between one and 50 units. "If we include older generation models, the number is significantly higher," Fuhlbrügge said.

What it means for operators

For shipmanagers, the commercial case rests on three converging pressures: a bunker market reset sharply higher by geopolitical conflict, carbon pricing that penalises inefficiency under EU ETS, FuelEU Maritime and the CII simultaneously, and an ageing global fleet that will keep sailing — and burning — for years to come.

With freight rate pressure unlikely to offset rising fuel and emissions costs across every trade lane, expect engine performance monitoring to shift from an engineering-department afterthought to a standard item in operators' decarbonisation and cost-control toolkits as carbon verification requirements tighten through the decade.