Houston! The Shaden Has Set Sail! -- Supertanker Test Successful -- US Oil On Saudi-Supertanker Headed For China -- February 19, 2018

Updates

April 12, 2018: right on schedule. The Shaden should be in port Friday, April 13, 2018.

April 9, 2018: ping received April 9, 2018 -- tanker northbound along east coast of southern Taiwan.

March 28, 2018: in the Indian Ocean, heading toward Singapore, on its way to China.

February 25, 2018: updated position today suggests the supertanker will be going around the tip of South America rather than through the Panama Canal. 

February 24, 2018: updated position here.  

Original Post

 

See this post. This is really, really cool. Saudi-flagged supertanker picks up US oil along gulf coast (LOOP) and has now set sail for China. Link for the Bloomberg story here.

You can track the supertanker Shaden at this site. It took me a little bit of time to navigate (no pun intended) the site but when you figure it out, it's kind of fun. It will be interesting to see if it goes through the recently widened Panama Canal.

From the Bloomberg article:

The flood of U.S. oil exports stepped up a gear on Monday after the first fully laden supertanker sailed from an American port, alleviating a bottleneck that’s limited overseas shipments.

The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, or LOOP, the only deep water port in the U.S. able to handle the industry’s biggest tankers, said in a statement it had successfully completed the first loading of a very large crude carrier. Shipping data compiled by Bloomberg show the tanker is the Saudi Arabian-owned Shaden, now heading to the Chinese port of Rizhao.

"There could not be a better time to offer this service as domestic production surpasses 10 million barrels per day in the ever-dynamic global crude oil market," said LOOP LLC President Tom Shaw.

LOOP said the "shipper of record" was the trading arm of Royal Dutch Shell Plc. However, data compiled by Bloomberg showed the Shaden was booked last month by Unipec, China’s biggest oil trader. a unit of the country’s refining giant China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., or Sinopec.

LOOP didn’t disclose what kind of oil the Shaden loaded, but traders said it was unlikely U.S. shale oil. It’s more likely to be a mix of crude pumped out of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.