Introduction: More than 30 oil tankers are parked on the west coast of the United States, and more than 20 million barrels of oil are equivalent to 20% of the world ’s daily consumption. Storage spaces in Singapore, South Korea, the Netherlands, and South Africa are also close to saturation.

This article comes from the WeChat public account: Wall Street News (ID: wallstreetcn) author: Jun knowledge, the original title:” crude oil in the history of “the darkest period”: the California coast and Singapore tanker full of drift, a series of corporate bankruptcy “, the title figure comes from: IC photo

Oil prices have fallen to negative numbers, storage spaces around the world are “full of oil,” and industry companies are falling one by one … It may be the “darkest” period in the history of the crude oil market.

The most direct fuse causing this situation is a serious shortage of storage space.

The market is generally worried that the global oil storage space saturation countdown needs to be calculated in weeks, not months, because the excess is too large and there is too little space. Even if Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries have begun to reduce production ahead of time, they have no time to find a place to place crude oil.

In short, the world is almost nowhere to put crude oil. Swiss oil trading giant Gunvor Group (Gunvor Group) Torbjorn Tornqvist, head of the Commodity Trading Department, warned:

We are entering the final game. The most serious stage may be reached from early to mid May. It is only a few weeks away from the end, not a few months.

Oil tanker parked all over the US and offshore Asia p>

On the west coast of the United States, more than 30 oil tankers were parked in the waters extending from Los Angeles to the California Bay Area early last week. The total oil load is more than 20 million barrels, and the number has reached a historical record. One fifth of the world’s fuel consumption per day.

Among them, three quarters of tankers are full of oil. They have been here for at least 7 days, which is also rare in history.

The scary thing is that the number of tankers and cargo tonnage parked here are still increasing . The same applies to the Saldanha Bay area in South Africa.

As of the week of April 17, national crude oil inventories increased to 518.6 million barrels, close to the record high of 535 million barrels set in 2017.

The narrow waterways near Singapore ’s oil storage terminal have recently become more crowded, with about 60 tankers docked along the busy strait, far exceeding the usual 30 to 40 ships. Some of these ships are not used to transport oil, but to store oil because the oil tank on the shore is already full. Ship brokers and traders say that it now takes about two weeks to unload the cargo, and usually only takes 4 to 5 days.

A Singapore ship broker said that for the first time they received so many calls to reserve ships to store oil instead of transporting oil.

Sri Paravaikkarasu, head of oil consulting business at industry consulting firm FGE Asia, said that the operating rate of Singapore ’s refineries may have dropped to around 60%, and it may further drop to 50% in the second quarter.