Re-Posting: I Don't Want This Post To Get Lost In The Clutter -- September 11, 2020

Sometimes I feel like an idiot. Wow. A reader helped me out. And that's why I love to blog.

See this post from yesterday. From yesterday:

Hurricane Laura: landfall, August 26, 2020

• September 1, 2020: refineries still getting back on their feet; but no major stories coming out of the region;
• last week, Sunday, August 30, 2020 - Saturday, September 5, 2020

Keep those dates in mind when looking at the following:

One can argue that this was because of Hurricane Laura, but Laura had minimal impact on the oil sector compared to many, many other hurricanes since 2010 when data was first available. So, blame it on "lo-impact Laura" but that is hardly the answer ... and even if that's the answer, that's still not much revenue for Saudi Arabia.

A reader provided an explanation:

The Saudi spike of oil imports, go back to March when Saudi Arabia was negotiating oil production reductions that others (mainly Russia) that would not comply. Saudi Arabia decided to rent a fleet of VLCCs to dump ~100,000,000 barrels of crude on the open market stored in VLCCs.

Where is the safest place to park a VLCC full of crude oil without problems of pirates? Of course, the coast of USA, lowers cost of insurance. Plus Saudis own a big refinery that can process that crude. I believe that this was a simple business decision of storing a few billions of $$$s of crude oil safely, plus close to a market to eventually sell the crude rather then move the VLCC to Asia. VLCC propulsion engines use a lot of fuel 

The reader's comment and my reply was at this post.  

Wow, I feel like an idiot. The reader is exactly correct. I had forgotten all about that, and I had made a very, very big deal about that exact "thing." 

Anyway, the reader got it exactly right. I'm impressed.

But there's a cherry on top of this sundae. 

The next link will be to the must-read article for the day.