According to Vortexa, an oil analytics firm, the volume of key oil products held in floating storage around the world hit 72m barrels on Sunday, up from 33.7m a month ago. “The massive drop in gasoline, diesel and jet demand with the spread of Covid-19 has led to a huge global products oversupply,” said Jay Maroo, senior analyst at Vortexa.
"China's gasoline and gasoil exports have rebounded this month, compared to the lows seen in May/June, as strong surplus and narrower domestic margins prompted refiners to sell more cargoes to the regional market," said Serena Huang, Asia lead analyst at oil analytics firm Vortexa.”
"Asia is overflowing with jet and diesel, demand destruction is taking place faster than refinery supply cuts,” said Serena Huang, a Singapore-based senior analyst at analytics firm Vortexa Ltd. “Massive volumes of surplus barrels are moving into storage tanks in Singapore and Malaysia, and finding homes in Africa and Europe."
"A lingering oil glut, falling chartering rates, and increasing Chinese port congestion are keeping global floating storage volumes more than triple the norm, despite recent discharges of sea-stored Atlantic basin crude. The volume of oil held in tankers that have been sitting for seven or more days is at 249mn bl, down month-over-month by 6pc, but still up more than three-fold over pre-pandemic levels, according to oil analytics firm Vortexa.”
“Vortexa is one of a new breed of companies applying AI to all this satellite and market data to monitor global energy markets. Fabio Kuhn, co-founder and chief executive, shows me a live map plotting the location of thousands of tanker ships across the globe."
“As road miles increase and factories reopen, Chinese refineries are buying more physical oil. Another sign that physical oil markets are returning to normal: The amount of oil being stored and transported at sea has started to unwind. Total floating storage of crude, diesel, gasoline and jet fuel fell to 258 million barrels on May 21, down 7% from the recent peak on 14 May, according to oil analytics company Vortexa.”
“It’s not only the supertankers that are associated with crude floating storage - we’re seeing some really unusual patterns in cargoes of refined products. Last week we started seeing gasoline cargoes that had been heading for the United States switch direction mid-ocean and head for storage locations in the Caribbean, Singapore, Amsterdam.” - Clay Seigle, Vortexa
