by seahorse2 » Thu 29 Jun 2006, 16:03:17
As most everyone here has seen, Saudi Arabia is saying its reducing its oil production bc there is a glut of crude in inventories and there is about 300k barrels now on ships.
Here's the statement:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '3')50,000 barrels of heavy crude oil have been lifted from the ground but cannot be sold because the world lacks the refining capacity to turn it into useful fuels like gasoline or diesel.
He later confirmed most of that is already loaded onto tankers, just waiting for sales contracts.
Here are my questions:
(1) How much oil does an average tanker hold?
(2) Can it be confirmed that there are tankers loaded but no place to go? This doesn't make sense to me. At one time, not so long ago, they said there was a tanker shortage and tanker rates were increasing due to high demand. So, based on these previous statements, I find it hard to believe a tanker would be sitting there without a contract and not prebooked for delivery.
Refinery issues