Key takeaways
- FuelEU pooling is a commercial arrangement, not a regulated marketplace. Participants remain responsible for negotiating contractual protections and managing counterparty risk.
- Due diligence is essential. Before joining a pool, parties should assess counterparties, data integrity, fuel certification, verifier arrangements and contractual remedies.
- Data quality drives compliance. A pool relies on accurate, verified compliance data from every participating vessel, making transparency critical.
- Fuel certification can affect the entire pool. Invalid or disputed sustainability documentation may undermine the value of a compliance surplus.
- Pooling rights require careful contractual planning. The “one vessel, one pool” rule can create complications in successive charterparties, sub-charters and vessel sales.
- The lowest pooling price may carry the highest legal risk. Cost savings should be weighed against transparency, governance and contractual protections.
FuelEU Maritime has introduced a new commercial language into shipping: “compliance balance”, “surplus”, “deficit”, “banking”, “borrowing” and “pooling”. Of these, “pooling” may become one of the most important, and one of the most misunderstood.
What is pooling?
At its simplest, pooling allows the positive FuelEU performance of one vessel to be used to offset the negative performance of another. A vessel that performs better than the greenhouse gas intensity target may generate a surplus. A vessel that performs worse may generate a deficit.
Pooling allows those balances to be combined and allocated between ships, so that a deficit vessel can reduce or eliminate its exposure without necessarily changing fuel or paying the full FuelEU penalty.
For owners and charterers, the commercial appeal is obvious. If buying surplus through a pool is cheaper than using more expensive fuel or paying a penalty, pooling may look like the efficient answer. During the first FuelEU reporting period, which ran from 1 January to 31 December 2025, market participants were already looking closely at pooling as a practical compliance tool. This builds on the contractual allocation issues discussed in our earlier article, “Who Pays for FuelEU Maritime? Owners, Charterers and the Contractual Gap Behind Decarbonisation”.
But pooling is not just a technical mechanism. It is also a contractual relationship, a data-sharing exercise, a verification process and, in many cases, a counterparty-risk decision.
That is where the real risk lies.
Counterparty risk as a contractual constraint
The European Commission’s FuelEU Maritime guidance makes clear that pooling is based on private arrangements between companies. The European Commission and national authorities do not provide pool formation services, there is no pooling price set by the Regulation, and the commercial terms are left to the parties. In other words, FuelEU creates the legal possibility of pooling, but not a central marketplace comparable to the EU ETS.
This is a critical distinction. Under the EU ETS, the market trades recognised allowances through an established infrastructure. FuelEU pooling is different. There is no public exchange that removes the need to consider the identity, reliability, data quality and contractual responsibility of the parties in the pool.
The regulatory database may record and verify the pool arrangement, but it does not negotiate the bargain. It does not decide who bears the cost if another participant’s data is wrong. It does not determine who is liable if a fuel certificate later turns out to be defective. Those issues remain matters for the parties and their contracts.
The larger the pool, the larger the network risk
From a law firm’s perspective, the emergence of large pools containing many vessels creates a real concern, particularly where participants may not carry out KYC or due diligence on every other participant. This concern is practical, not theoretical. If a pool grows to hundreds of ships, it becomes difficult for any individual participant to know exactly who else is in the structure.
For a general reader, the issue can be compared to joining a group financial arrangement with many unknown parties. You may be entering because the numbers look attractive. But the performance of the group may depend on the conduct, data and reliability of people you do not know.
In FuelEU terms, this matters because a pool works only if the regulatory requirements are satisfied. The Commission guidance states that the total pool compliance balance must be positive or zero, and that ships with a deficit before pooling cannot be made worse off after pooling, while ships with a surplus cannot end up with a deficit after pooling.
That sounds straightforward, but it creates a practical dependency. The pool depends on the accuracy of the compliance balance of each vessel. If one participant’s figures are wrong, overstated or later challenged, the whole commercial structure may be affected. The larger the pool, the more each participant relies on data produced by others.
Data quality is not a minor administrative issue
FuelEU compliance is document-heavy. It depends on monitoring plans, verified FuelEU reports, fuel data, energy consumption, certificates, verifier calculations and database entries. DNV explains that the FuelEU process begins with submission of the annual FuelEU report to an accredited verifier, and that banking, borrowing and pooling are flexibility mechanisms applied to a vessel’s compliance balance.
That means pooling risk is not only “who is the counterparty?” It is also “whose data am I relying on?”
If one participant in a large pool has made errors in its data, that may undermine the stability of the pool. Therefore, at least in the early stages of the Regulation’s application, smaller pools may be easier to manage contractually and may reduce exposure to unknown participants.
This is an important early lesson for the market. Pooling should not be treated as a simple purchase of a commodity. What is being transferred is not a physical product, but the benefit of verified compliance data. If that data is wrong, late, unsupported or disputed, the commercial value of the pool may change.
Fuel certification can become a pool-wide problem
FuelEU also depends heavily on the quality of fuel certification, especially where biofuels or other low-GHG fuels are used to create surplus. The Commission guidance explains that eligible fuels must satisfy the relevant certification requirements, including certification under recognised schemes where applicable.
This matters because a surplus may be created by using a fuel that is said to have favourable greenhouse gas characteristics. If that fuel certification is later questioned, the surplus may also be questioned.
A further concern is the risk of fraudulently certified biofuel being used to generate surplus for a pool, and the difficulty of managing any resulting dispute. This creates a clear transparency question: which vessels are in the pool, and what verified performance are participants actually pooling?
For owners, charterers and managers, this is where counterparty risk and certification risk overlap. A party may enter a pool because the price is attractive. But if the surplus it is buying depends on another vessel’s fuel certificate, then the buyer needs comfort that the certificate is genuine, properly issued, transferable for FuelEU purposes and accepted by the verifier.
One vessel, one pool? Back-to-back and successive charterparty problems
FuelEU pooling is also difficult because ships do not always trade neatly within the calendar-year logic of the regulation. The reporting period is a calendar year, but charterparties often start and end mid-year. A vessel may have one charterer from January to March, another from April to September, and another after that. It may also be sub-chartered.
The Regulation and guidance make clear that a ship may be included in only one pool for its greenhouse gas intensity compliance balance for a given reporting period.
This creates a serious commercial issue. If pooling rights are granted to one charterer early in the year, a later charterer may be unable to use those rights, even if it operates the vessel for most of the year. In our view, this problem is closely connected with the difficulty of passing pooling rights and obligations through successive charters and sub-charters on a back-to-back basis.
The same risk can arise on the sale and purchase of a ship. If a vessel is sold during the year, the buyer may discover that pooling rights have already been committed to a previous charterer. That may affect the economic value of the vessel’s compliance balance and should be addressed in the memorandum of agreement.
The cheapest option may not be the safest option
Pooling may be commercially attractive because it can be cheaper than paying the FuelEU penalty or using more expensive compliant fuel. But price should not be the only consideration.
A low pooling price may reflect a genuine market opportunity. It may also reflect weak transparency, limited recourse, thin contractual protection, poor data controls or untested counterparties. The legal and commercial question is therefore not simply: “Can we buy surplus cheaply?” It is: “What exactly are we buying, from whom, based on what data, verified by whom, and with what remedy if the pool does not work?”
This is why FuelEU pooling agreements should be reviewed with the same seriousness as charterparty clauses, bunker supply terms or emissions trading arrangements. They are not merely administrative forms. They allocate real economic risk and they should be treated as such.
What should parties check before joining a pool?
Identity
Parties should know who is operating or controlling the pool, who the contractual counterparty is, who the other participants are to the extent relevant, and whether ordinary KYC, sanctions and credit checks have been performed.
Data
The agreement should state what information each participant must provide, what happens if that information is inaccurate, and who bears the consequences if the pool balance changes after verification.
Certification
Where surplus is created through biofuels or other alternative fuels, parties should require proper proof of sustainability and evidence that the relevant fuel documentation will be accepted for FuelEU purposes.
Verification
The Commission guidance states that all ships in a pool must register and validate their participation in the FuelEU database, nominate a pool verifier and agree the allocation of the pool’s compliance balance among the ships. The pool verifier then verifies the allocation and the resulting compliance balance of each ship. This makes verifier selection, access to information and responsibility central.
Timing
The contract should deal with the 30 April deadline in the verification period for recording and verifying the chosen flexibility mechanisms, including pooling, and with what happens if data or verification is delayed.
Remedy
If another participant’s defective data, certificate or conduct causes loss, the agreement should provide clear contractual recourse. Without that, a party may be left with a regulatory result it did not expect and no practical recovery route.
Conclusion
FuelEU pooling is likely to remain an important compliance tool. It may reduce cost, monetise surplus and give owners and charterers flexibility in a market where fuel choices, prices and availability remain uncertain.
But pooling is not risk-free. It creates a network of dependence between vessels, companies, verifiers, fuel certificates and data systems. The larger and less transparent the pool, the greater the risk that a participant may be exposed to people, documents and calculations it has not properly checked.
The central lesson is simple: pooling rights should not be given, bought or accepted casually.
A well-drafted pooling arrangement should identify the parties, control data quality, address certification risk, allocate verifier responsibility, provide remedies for defective participation, and coordinate with the relevant charterparty and ship-management arrangements.
FuelEU Maritime was designed as a decarbonisation regulation. In practice, it is also creating a new class of commercial and contractual risk. For the shipping market, the question is no longer only whether pooling can reduce compliance cost. The question is whether the pool is reliable enough to trust.
Disclaimer:
The information contained in INTERWITS’ articles is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice on any specific matter. Users should not rely on this information without seeking appropriate legal or professional advice tailored to their situation. INTERWITS disclaims any liability for any errors or omissions or for any actions taken based on the content of these articles. Redistribution or reproduction of this material without the express permission of INTERWITS is strictly prohibited.
______________
2026 © INTERWITS