The temporarily unavailable oil is “wandering” at sea.
Frode Morkedal, an analyst at Clarksons Platou, a global shipping giant, disclosed in a research report on April 21 that the oil stored offshore has increased to nearly 250 million barrels. Oil storage is exploding at an unprecedented rate.
According to foreign media reports, traders have sent oil tankers to search for the best storage location, resulting in some “strange” shipping activities. For example, two diesel oil tankers originally planned to be sent from India to Europe have changed their routes to New York, where storage space is richer.
Hugo de Stoop, CEO of the Belgian super-large tanker Euronav NV Group, stated that as the spot market moves towards the “stratosphere” “, More and more ships in the fleet will be used as storage.
The new crown epidemic has caused the global transportation system to be paralyzed, the economy is going down, and oil demand has collapsed as fast as ever.
In the early hours of April 21, 2020, for the first time in history, crude oil futures trading prices were negative. In just two hours, the WTI crude oil futures delivered by the New York Mercantile Exchange in May fell successively from the psychological point of 10 integers from 10 to 1 dollar, staged the craziest selling in the history of crude oil futures, and closed less than half before the day. Hours ago fell to a negative value, and finally closed at -37.63 US dollars per barrel, a decrease of 305.97%.
This means that the seller needs to pay a price to allow the buyer to take the crude oil from him. The May contract became a hot potato, and the oil storage facility became sweet and sour.
It is also the imbalance of supply and demand under the severe impact of the epidemic. Dairy farmers can pour out perishable milk with high storage costs. But oil producers cannot save the market by dumping crude oil that is perishable and cannot be stored for long periods of time, transportation and storage costs into the sea.
Royal Vopak, headquartered in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, is the world ’s largest independent oil storage company. The company’s chief financial officer Gerard Paulides said to foreign media on April 21st that under the new crown epidemic, supply exceeded demand and traders’ space for storing crude oil and refined fuel was already occupied.
“The oil”The capacity is almost sold out,” Paulides said. “Vopak’s global storage space is almost gone as long as it is not under maintenance. I heard that it is the same in other places. ”
For this reason, the company is expediting the completion of the maintenance work for the four tankers in Rotterdam in an effort to make room.