After China rushed to buy extra barrels during April’s oil price crash, the country’s ports are struggling to unload record volumes of crude with storage tanks full. Refinitiv Eikon data showed more than 80 million barrels of crude oil are currently waiting to be discharged from tankers in Chinese ports.
Half of those are at the Qingdao port area in Shandong province. According to four traders, the waiting time is two-three weeks or sometimes even longer. As there are still many tankers waiting to offload and more coming, the congestion at Chinese ports looks set to persist throughout July.
During the last 10 days of June, major Chinese ports saw crude oil handling volume up 33.9 percent year-on-year and port inventory up 28.9 percent. For the whole month, crude oil handling volume rose 22.51 percent. Traders said massive commercial storage construction in Shandong may help to offset congestion in the ports. For use in the second half of 2020, millions of tonnes of new storage space are to be opened.
