“Recessionary” Demand Forces New York Harbor To Divert Gasoline Shipments
Two weeks ago, Goldman analysts were stunned when they noted that in recent weeks gasoline demand in the US has collapsed to levels that suggest not all is well with the economy. In fact, as the bank’s oil expert Damien Courvalin said “to achieve the 5.9% decline suggested by the weekly data, our model requires PCE to contract 6%, in other words, a recession.”
Goldman then quickly changed the unpleasant narrative – one which would suggest that the US economy is in far worse shape than official data represent – and provided several alternative explanations why such a “sudden collapse is unlikely” and said that “we view the larger than seasonal ytd builds in US gasoline stocks as driven by transient supply factors rather than persistent demand issues.”
Perhaps, but so far those “transient” supply factors are only getting more chronic, and as supply continues to grow in anticipation of a demand bounce that refuses to materialize, leading to ever louder speculation that there is something very wrong with the US consumer…
… gasoline inventories have hit record levels, and nowhere is this more obvious than on the East Coast, where as Bloomberg writes overnight, “the biggest gasoline market in the U.S. is bursting at the seams.”
As a result, just like during last year’s unprecedented gasoline glut which, too, was supposed to be “transient”, but has only gotten worse, traders are now lining up to export gasoline and diesel from New York Harbor, an area that normally relies on fuel imports from Europe and eastern Canada.
While at least 6 cargoes that were headed to New York from Europe in January and early February were diverted to the Caribbean or the U.S. Gulf Coast, that wasn’t enough to stem the oversupply building up in terminals along the Eastern Seaboard. Record-high inventories in the region are now pushing prices low enough to turn the typical trade flow on its head.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
