Stunning Photos Of Huge Oil Supertanker Lines Forming “World’s Biggest Traffic Jam”
– Reuters
Last week we revealed what we thought was a “shocking photo” of nearly 30 oil tankers caught in a traffic jam off the Iraqi coast, an indication of just how much excess oil is currently parked offshore.
To be sure, the record offshore storage is a problem because with the front-end contango collapsing, DB warned just several weeks ago when comparing the current level of floating storage (157.3 million barrels) versus that in early February (126.6 million barrels), that there may be an additional 31 million barrels of inventory to be drawn down between now and the next inventory trough over the next several months. It calculated that “depending on the duration of drawdown (three months or six months) this could mean anywhere from 165-330 kb/d of incremental supply.”
But the photo above, meant to do DB’s thesis justice, was nothing in comparisons to what Reuters would reveal today.
Because as ports struggle to cope with a global oil glut, huge queues of supertankers have formed in some of the world’s busiest sea lanes, where some 200 million barrels of crude lies waiting to be loaded or delivered, Reuters reports today.
The vessels, filled with oil worth around $7.5 billion at current market prices, would stretch for almost 40 km (25 miles) if formed up in one straight line.
Something not quite so theoretical, and yet almost identical taking place right now, is shown in the photo below, which shows VLCC supertankers traveling between India and Southeast Asia, courtesy of Reuters.
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