Supertanker, After Two Years, Finally Unloads Crude Oil Cargo -- November 9, 2017

This is a cool story for anyone interested in oil and the Mideast. It's in the Financial Times and will probably disappear at some point. It is archived. Data points:

• Mideast often uses sea-going tankers to store crude oil when prices are low
• Seaways Laura Lynn: a supertanker as long as the Empire State building is high
• has sat laden with oil off the coast of Oman for more than two year
• storage for cargo of more than 3 million bbls of oil
• the Laura Lynn is 50% larger than the second largest (and far more commnon) size of supertanker
• the Laura Lynn is one of only two ultra-large crude carriers (ULCC) still in ocean-going sercie
• converted into fixed-position storage and offloading service vessels for offshore oilfields
• Vitol, private trading house run by British-based executive Ian Taylor, chartered the ship when the oil glut intensified in early 2015
• the vessel was parked near the Strait of Hormuz for more than two year
• this week, Vitol finally blinked: satellite tracking noted that the shiop rose out of hte water, suggesting that it had suddenly unloaded the majority of its oil
• the 3 million bbls of oil would have been moved to smaller tankers to "hungry" refineries, which after a three-year feast during the oil glut are finally having to pay up to get the bbls they need

I have rarely blogged about Vitol before, including this post which provided some nice background to today's story.

For a story on another ULCC, see this post.