Traders Book Floating Storage For Diesel, Not Jet Fuel

摘要

Floating storage is a hot topic in Europe’s diesel and jet fuel markets as land tanks get ever fuller and the growing tide of imports shows little sign of slowing. Most ships currently at anchor in Europe are just waiting for enough tank space to discharge and paying expensive demurrage of up to $30,000 per day while they wait. But a handful of players are beginning to fix cheap older vessels for longer-term diesel floating storage -to give them more logistical flexibility in Europe, while at the same time positioning themselves for a possible blowout of regional gasoil spreads next year. Swiss trader Vitol has fixed the 1996 vintage ore-bulk-oil (OBO) carriers SKS Tyne and SKS Tana to hold a potential 220,000 metric tons of diesel in Amsterdam and Antwerp -essentially an extension of the trader’s Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) tanks -for just $15,000/d. OBO carriers were designed to switch between oil and bulk cargoes -specifically to take crude to China then bring back coal -but were rarely used that way and tend to be cheaper than dedicated oil tankers as a result. European major Royal Dutch Shell also has the 2012-built Hua Lin Wan outside New York Harbor. “That’s the only one actually doing anything yet,” a shipping source tells Jet Fuel Intelligence. Shell is reported to be looking for more ships to store diesel, alongside trading companies Koch and Trafigura, but there has yet to be any mention of deliberately storing jet fuel at sea. The last time floating storage worked in late 2009, Vitol alone amassed more than 1 million tons of jet in European waters (JFI Nov.30’09).