"Supertankers circumnavigate the globe delivering crude oil from places like the Strait of Hormuz to markets from Houston to Hong Kong. Today, dozens of those massive ships are not transporting oil, but serving as floating storage space.
Oil demand has plummeted along with home prices and stock market indexes, but discerning where energy demand could go in 2009 isn't easy.
That's why, as oil markets attempt to calibrate in the face of this recession, some traders, refiners, big oil companies and other interests have been buying cheap oil in recent weeks and squirreling it away in storage tanks and ships with plans to unload it months from now when prices are higher.
It's difficult to quantify exactly how much oil is being stored in ships, but Frontline LTD, which runs one of the largest crude supertanker fleets, estimates 80 million barrels of oil are drifting slowly on the high seas-roughly equal to a day's oil consumption for the entire world.
...
For now, some vessels are idling in the Gulf of Mexico until they get directions to unload at the Louisiana Offshore Oil Loop. Others are doing slow circles around Scotland's Orkney Islands in the North Sea. Still more are waiting off the coasts of once booming Asian economies." [
Houston Chronicle]
