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Veritas Petroleum Services (VPS) has issued a bunker alert for the Spanish port of Bilbao relating to the supply of distillates with a low flash point.

The development follows other low flash point distillate alerts by VPS in 2018 for Tallinn, Miami (2), New York, Skaw, Philadelphia (2), Le Havre and Corpus Christi - bringing this year's total so far to 10, with four in Europe and six in North America.

And with less than four-and-a-half months of the year gone, the total number of flash point distillate alerts is already just one less than the total amount issued by VPS during the whole of last year - 11.

Flash point: the most common quality issue for distillates

In a recent review of bunker alerts by VPS's Group Commercial & Business Development Director Steve Bee, a worldwide comparison of bunker alerts by test parameter showed that flash point was by far the most common quality issue for distillates last year, with 11 alerts, or 50 percent of all worldwide distillate warnings.

Also, of the 12 global flash point alerts issued in 2017, 11 were for distillates and only one for residual fuels.

Distillate alerts in Europe

Europe was the region to record the highest number of VPS distillate bunker alerts in 2017 with 14 warnings - or 63.6 percent of global distillate alerts.

VPS issued six flash point alerts for Europe in 2017, which represented half of all global warnings relating to flash point - with the other half flagged up in the Americas.

In a comparison with other quality issues in Europe last year, flash point was only beaten by cloud point with seven alerts.