Crude-laden tankers have been lining up for weeks at a time off China’s coast as ports struggle to handle the millions of barrels of inbound oil that have swamped the country’s overfilled storage sites. More than half of the vessels are very large crude carriers, the workhorses of seaborne oil trade, which can move up to two million barrels each in a single sailing. PREVIEWUp to a quarter of all VLCCs, by industry estimates, have been hired for so-called floating storage, mostly by oil traders looking to sell at higher prices later this year on the belief that oil demand and pricing will recover. For the full year, EIA forecasts that global consumption of petroleum and liquid fuels will average 93.1 million barrels per day, down 8 million barrels from last year. “There is a massive mismatch between tanker capacity and underlying oil demand,” said Peter Sand, Bimco’s chief shipping analyst.

Source: Wall Street Journal August 12, 2020 16:01 UTC