Despite recent discharges of sea-stored Atlantic basin crude, global floating storage volumes are more than triple the norm. Down month-over-month by 6 percent, the volume of oil held in tankers that have been sitting for seven or more days is at 249mn bl. However, it is still up more than three-fold over pre-pandemic levels, according to oil analytics firm Vortexa.
Rising wait times along the Chinese coast has mitigated the combined effect of reduced wait times in Latin America and recent discharges of crude from the US and North Sea on global floating storage levels.
Lower freight rates resulting from weak oil export demand have spurred some traders to add more tankers into floating storage in regions like northwest Europe and west Africa while recovering oil demand in some parts of the world has caused some traders to pull oil out of floating storage.
Despite signs of recovering oil demand, the share of tankers chartered with floating storage options that traders actually use for storage has held largely steady in recent months.
