One month ago when oil was attempting another break out above $50, we wrote that the black gold had officially reached its “tipping point” when as we noted China had finally reached the limits of its onshore oil storage capacity.
This followed rather dire warnings by both us earlier in the year…
… and Goldman more recently, that US oil storage is also rapidly approaching it own tipping point, something which the oil market has finally priced in with the collapse in crude to levels not seen since the financial crisis.
Fast forward to today, when none other than the PIRA Energy Group warned that the oil market is set to exhaust onshore crude storage some time in 1Q 2016, which considering there are just 23 days left in 2015, could be as soon as 4 weeks from today, and judging by the way oil is trading, that’s increasingly what the market (if not so much Andy Hall) thinks.
PIRA adds that global oil stocks seen 500m bbl above normal by end-2015, and that Brent will “continue to struggle” because of surplus.
To be sure, if land storage is exhausted, even Goldman’s rather dire prediction of $20 oil may prove optimistic.
But while ongoing soaring supply in the face of sliding demand is terrible news for the price of oil, it is great news of oil tankers, which courtesy of contango have become the equivalent of offshore storage platforms in which to store oil until better times emerge. Only… the contango trade is no longer working for one simple reason – oil tanker rates have gone stratospheric to the point where it is no longer economic to store oil in ships.
According to Bloomberg, oil tanker rates soared to the highest in seven years amid an acceleration in the number of bookings and signs that the ships are being delayed when unloading due to a lack of space in on-land storage tanks. This means that day rates for 2 million-barrel carrying ships sailing to Japan from Saudi Arabia, the industry’s benchmark route, surged to $111,359, the highest since July 2008, according to the Baltic Exchange in London.
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