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Thursday, November 9, 2017

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.

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