Updates
May 13, 2020:
April 29, 2020: status of the tankers.
Original Post
Stories here:
- ABC, Los Angeles;
- Financial Times;
- story at Bloomberg posted earlier;
Back-of-the-envelope:
- the US imports 500,000 bopd from Saudi Arabia; link here;
- 20 VLCC x 2 million bbls/VLCC - 40 million bbls of crude oil
- 40 million bbls of crude oil per day / 500,000 bopd = 80 days
The Saudi's self-reported that they decreased production in March, 2020. However, the average of estimates from the IEA, the EIA, CERA, Reuters, Platts and Argus is that they increased output by 388,000 barrels per day to 10,058,000 barrels per day.
they were supposedly sending a fleet of VLCCs this way in an attempt to flood US storage (which they denied).
Recent reports have them still pumping oil and cutting prices even after last week's agreement.The amount of storage capacity the Saudis have is probably somewhere between 100 million and 200 million bbls of oil. I think the best estimate is 160 million bbls.
The environmentalists' heads must be about to explode with all that oil off the coast and the potential environmental catastrophe awaiting.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking the same thing: the true environmentalists need to be concerned; the faux environmentalists are probably hoping several major catastrophes.
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