Genscape Vesseltracker identified a shipment of 1.3 million gallons of biodiesel from Australia arriving to the Houston area April 27, according to a blog post by Genscape Analyst Will Martin and Susan Olson, Genscape’s managing director of agriculture and biofuels. The Stolt Sun vessel carried the product that originated from the ports of Adelaide and Fremantle in Australia.

The event is newsworthy since U.S. EIA data show no U.S. imports of biodiesel from Australia since January 2013, and only a few shipments of biodiesel to the U.S. from Australia have ever been recorded.

The forward-looking federal blender's tax credit through the end of the year, an increased biomass-based diesel mandate under the renewable fuel standard (RFS), and rising low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) credit prices in California are expected to incentivize increased biodiesel imports this year. “Seeing another source of imports that wasn’t in the market in 2014 and 2015 could be an indication of the strength of imports in fulfilling increased demand,” write Martin and Olson.

In 2013 Genscape acquired Vesseltracker.com GmbH to create what Genscape calls the world’s largest land and sea oil supply chain monitoring network, providing an accurate, comprehensive picture of global shipping.

To read Olson and Martin’s complete entry, click here.