Global Oil Trading, Tanker Charters : Latest News and Analysis on Crude Glut Risk - Bloomberg
▻https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-11/oil-traders-snap-up-tankers-in-sign-second-wave-glut-may-be-near
Photographer : Tim Rue/Bloomberg
• Trafigura leads frenzy of multi-month tanker charters
• Tanker rates crashed, bringing floating storage trade in play
Some of the world’s biggest oil traders are gearing up for a possible resurgence of a coronavirus-induced glut of crude and fuels, snapping up giant tankers for months-long charters so that they can be ready to store excess barrels if necessary.
The chartering spree is likely to alarm Saudi Arabia, Russia and their allies as it indicates that the oil traders believe the crude market is moving into a surplus after OPEC+ managed to create a deficit earlier this summer with its output cuts.
Trafigura Group, the world’s second-largest independent oil trader, in recent days booked about a dozen supertankers that can hold a total of 24 million barrels of oil, according to people familiar with the matter. All in, about 18 similar charters have been arranged with Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Vitol Group and Lukoil among those also hiring the vessels, according to shipbrokers’ lists of bookings seen by Bloomberg. State-controlled China National Chemical Corporation Ltd, known as ChemChina, has also joined, the lists show.
While the bookings don’t stipulate that they are for storage — they are so-called time charters at fixed daily rates — it will give traders extra capacity to store if doing so becomes profitable or necessary. Earlier this year, millions of barrels got kept on tankers, even making it into Donald Trump’s press briefings, because demand collapsed and producer nations didn’t initially cut their output in response.
That led to a profit bonanza for the traders because spot oil prices became so depressed that it rewarded companies to park barrels on ships — one of the market’s most expensive forms of storage — and sell them later. This time around, the same trade has turned profitable on paper, but not to the same extent as earlier this year.
Les prix à terme étant de nouveau supérieurs aux prix spot, les traders et les armateurs se préparent à très fortement augmenter le stockage en mer des produits pétroliers, comme pendant le confinement.