Where In The World Is Abqaiq? Carrying Coal To Newcastle? No Way, Jose! -- February 9, 2019

Updates

March 20, 2019: off the east coast of South Africa. Destination now: Sikka, India. 

February 21, 2019: update here. Off the coast of Venezuela; has new destination: South Africa.

Original Post

One can track the Abqaiq at this link.

• origin: SA RTA
• destination: VE JOT
• current position: just off the west coast of Morocco

"Carrying coal to Newcastle?" Literally? No, for the benefit of Occasional-Cortex, that's a phrase to describe something pointless or superfluous. Although in this case, it's probably neither.

Story at Platts. Data points:

• a Saudi state-owned tanker: the VLCC Abqaiq
• VLCC: very large crude carrier, capable of carrying two million bbls of crude oil
• half-full
• destination: Venezuela's main crude oil terminal, Jose, Venezuela
• departed the Yanbu port on the Red Sea on January 20, 2019
• to arrive at destination on February 11, 2019
• very unusual for Saudi to ship oil to Venezuela, although it has happened in the past
• Venezuela needs diluent to mix with heavy oil to make it possible to ship it
• Platt's suggests the Saudi tanker could have "entered" the wrong destination code
• half-full; possibly the VLCC is headed to Venezuela to fill the tanker, and then proceed to India; India's Reliance has previously used Bahri tankers to transport Venezuelan crude to its refineries on the west coast of India

Not mentioned: if Venezuela routinely needs light oil to mix with its heavy oil for shipment, one would assume under "better" times, Venezuela would get that light oil from the US, but with US-imposed sanctions, Venezuela may be looking for alternatives.

Railbit, dilbt, shipbit, a dollar,
All for heavy oil, stand up and holler.

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Global Warming

Northern California, 2019