Saudi Arabia aims to create the world’s largest fleet of oil tankers following the establishment of a new US $1.5 billion investment fund by Arab Petroleum Investment Corporation, (Apicorp), and National Shipping Corporation of Saudi Arabia (Bahri).
Under the Apicorp Bahri Oil Shipping Fund venture announced yesterday, fifteen very large crude carriers (VLCCs) would be added to the shipper’s expected fleet of nearly fifty such vessels over the next two years. Bahri currently owns 36 VLCCs and plans to add ten more by 2018. Continue reading
Tag Archives: VLCCs
Iran’s 40 million barrels stored at sea
Shipping sources and tanker tracking data showed over the past three months Iran had deployed at least 15 very large crude carriers (VLCCs), each capable of carrying 2 million barrels, to store oil.
Iran is storing as much as 40 million barrels of oil on supertankers at sea as it prepares for a sales drive if a nuclear deal can be sealed.
In the meantime, Iran has been parking oil off its coast, mainly on tankers belonging to its national carrier NITC.
US May Run Out Of Oil Storage Space As Soon As June
On Sunday, we noted that the economics of the floating storage play could spell further declines for crude prices. With a global stock increase that’s some 3 times larger than that which occurred during the last period of oversupply, expect cheap, on-land storage to prove inadequate necessitating the use of VLCCs. According to Soc Gen, determining how far the front end of the curve would have to fall in order for traders to arbitrage the difference between buying and storing physical oil and selling paper forward is a good indicator for where prices may find a floor:
Global Geopolitics 